


The Angels in Chiswick

by crystanagahori



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Blink, Bootstrap Paradox aplenty, DoctorDonna, Established Relationship, F/M, Series 3 rewrite, Still very timey wimey, Weeping Angels - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-07 21:31:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3183866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystanagahori/pseuds/crystanagahori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Formerly the Angels of the Drumlins. Another Series 3 rewrite, with Donna tagging along for the ride. Sass, cuteness, falling in love with a heap of scary Weeping Angels inside. </p><p>Kind of follows The Happiest Place on Earth, but you don't have to read that to follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I love Martha Jones. I really, really do. Her stories in Series 3 are probably my favorite, and naturally got me wondering what it would be like if Donna was there instead. The Doctor wouldn't have gotten away with half the shit Martha had to do for him. :)) 
> 
> But anyway, here we are. I give you, Blink.

When Donna Noble was in school, a distant relative, some aunt who had gone to Disney World without her, had given her a Mickey Mouse alarm clock as a present. Donna found herself cursing that alarm clock, ringing at 7am precisely every morning from primary school to sixth form. She hated that clock with a passion, only too happy to toss it into the bin when she graduated. 

Nowadays, she had a different kind of alarm clock to wrestle with every morning. The Doctor, Time Lord that he was, had the same precision and level of annoyance her Mickey Mouse clock did. At her door at 7am (at least, according to the clock she had in her room), wheedling and whingeing until Donna came out for breakfast. It was especially worse when he’d thought up a new place for them to see. Sometimes she would give in and emerge with her bathrobe with a smile on her face, asking him what they had on for breakfast. 

Today was not going to be one of those days. 

“Sod off, Spaceman, I’m still sleeping!” She yelled from her bed, her face still buried under the pillow. They had just come from a planet where they were forced to run for their lives from a big, green, smelly parasitic alien (what were they called again? Smithereens? Supremes?) who wanted to use Donna’s body as a skin suit to trick the Doctor and get to the TARDIS. There was a lot of running, tripping over things in the dark and Donna was knackered. It wasn’t fair that the Doctor only needed an hour or two of sleep every day. She was only human, after all.  

“Donna,” the Doctor’s voice drifted gently from the other side of the door. “If you’re still sleeping, how are you talking to me?” 

She decided to ignore that, choosing instead to roll over to her side and cover her ears with a pillow. For all his impatience, she appreciated that the Doctor never never _never_ entered her room without permission. That, or the TARDIS was kind enough to keep the door locked for her. Little did she know, hers was the only door on the ship that the Doctor couldn’t just waltz into. It was, in fact, the first he had ever encountered. 

“Come on Donna Noble,” the Doctor whinged again. “Whole universe waiting out there to explore, you and me! We can go to the Floral Fallall Festival on the farthest planet in the Franconia System—beautiful place, populated with women who grow the biggest, most beautiful flowers in the Graconian Galaxy!”

She snorted into her pillow. 

“Or we could hop around the gravity fluxes in Silphora! Brilliant place, that. Like Trampoline World, only instead of trampolines, you're bouncing over their Great Canyons.”

Something told Donna that she would love to go jumping around canyons in an alien planet, but right now, she just wanted to sleep. 

“Alright then,” came the Doctor’s somewhat disappointed voice. “Whenever you're ready. I made you toast in the kitchen.”  


With still closed eyes, Donna snickered, slowly sitting up from bed. She could imagine the Doctor stuffing his hands into his large, tan coat and sauntering like a kicked puppy into the kitchen. The thought made her smile endlessly and she finally yelled out. 

“Give me ten minutes, Martian, and we can see about that canyon.”

* * *

As Donna showered and changed into something appropriate for the day, the Doctor went to the kitchen to make tea. It was one of those human things he’d just picked up on and couldn’t let go of. When Rose was in the TARDIS, she preferred drinking coffee, which the Doctor never understood. Even Martha needed at least two cups before she said a word to him in the mornings. As soon as Donna came onboard, she’d declared her tea preference and the Doctor was only too happy to make her tea every morning and toss the last of the coffee beans into a passing black hole. 

Settling into the kitchen table with his tea (eight teaspoons of sugar made it taste a bit like Jelly Baby tea) and toast, the Doctor started to figure out their coordinates for the day when his hand flew to the psychic paper in his breast pocket. Did it just…vibrate? He didn’t know the psychic paper could even do that. Unless the distress call was so frantic that it actually shook. 

‘OI SPACEMAN. Get here. Now.’ 

Then a list of coordinates. The psychic signature of the writing was unmistakeable—who else but Donna Noble, Queen of the Ois could make psychic paper tremble? But, the Doctor realised as he jogged to the console room, Donna was still in her room onboard the TARDIS. How could she send him coordinates? 

“Donna?” he asked, tilting his head towards the general direction of her bedroom. “You still in there?”  


“Yeah yeah, be out in a minute,” she answered back, like she was just around the corridor. Sonar spaces were just one of the ways the TARDIS made its massive trans-dimensional space easier to move about in. Not that Donna or the Doctor couldn’t yell like the best of them. The Doctor frowned as he looked at the message again. How was she doing this? There was no way that the psychic signature could be faked, no way that the woman in the bedroom wasn’t Donna Noble. The paper shook again, the coordinates written much bigger, much louder this time. 

‘I said NOW, Doctor!’ 

He didn’t need to be told twice. Dashing over to the TARDIS controls, he sent them whooshing through the Vortex, exactly where Donna Noble wanted him.  


	2. Chapter 2

Where Donna Noble wanted him to be was a large, abandoned house somewhere in what smelled like London. The Doctor held his tongue out at the air, tasting pollution, old age…and something not quite right. He frowned. The TARDIS had landed right outside an old wrought iron gate, its paint peeling and chipping while stray vines grew around a sign that said ‘DANGER KEEP OUT Unsafe Structure!’

“Hmm,” the Doctor hummed to himself, stepping fully out of the TARDIS and pointing at the gate with his sonic screwdriver. A quick whirr and the gates fell open as if on their own accord. 

“This doesn’t look like any canyon I’ve ever seen,” Donna’s voice came from the open doors of the TARDIS, giving him an incredulous look as she leaned against the slim doorway. She was wearing a white and blue striped shirt she hadn’t worn in quite some time, her bangs and soft ginger hair swept up into a ponytail on the back of her head. She’d long switched out her usual, more impractical shoes for a sturdy pair of boots they had picked up from a shop in Alpha Row, the most famous shopping destination in the universe. Not that the Doctor had voluntarily gone there. So he didn’t know the last little backwater planet they’d landed on hated ginger haired species. Not his fault, really. Donna didn’t have to demand a shopping trip out of it. 

Anyway. Donna looked lovely, if slightly annoyed, which wasn’t exactly unusual. The Doctor passed her the psychic paper, wondering if she would recognise her own message and saw her brows furrow at the message, like it didn’t look familiar to her at all.

“Someone sent me a message on the psychic paper,” he explained quickly as Donna handed him the paper back, closing the door behind her. “Told me to come here.”  


“So I saw,” she pointed out, looking up at the old house. A chill ran up her spine, and not in a good way. When she was younger, a bunch of school kids loved to come to this old house in the farther parts of Chiswick. When she was in secondary school, one of her boyfriends took her here hoping to get a good snog without any prying eyes. Now that she thought about it…

“Hang on,” she said, looking up at the house, and at the road behind them. Then she gasped and grabbed the Doctor’s arm in the long, tan coat, making him jerk backwards and give her a look. “I know this house! It’s Wester Drumlins, innit?”

“Dunno, just followed you—the message,” he said quickly, before she could catch on. “Must be something here. Come on.”

The house was unlocked and in terrible shape, just like Donna remembered. There were beer bottles and empty wrappers in the middle of a large sitting room. Chandeliers were draped over dusty old tarpaulins and cloth on the floor. There were sparse pieces of furniture still lying around. The wallpaper was torn halfway, like someone had tried to rip them out. Shivers ran up and down Donna’s spine again. Yep, this was Wester Drumlins alright. 

“I’m going to look around,” the Doctor declared, striding out of the room without another word. Donna frowned. Well, if the Doctor was going to look around, so was she! She’d seen this house several times over the years, but this was the first time she’d actually gone inside. It was creepy, to be sure, but she thought it would have been nice when it was new. Her eyes swept across the space, trying to picture it without all the cobwebs and the broken glass. While Wester Drumlins looked big and scary from the outside, the inside of the house was actually quite small, only a few rooms. The space was mostly taken up by a massive sitting room/conservatory that looked over to the garden outside. 

She peeked out the window and saw that the garden featured a statue of an angel, its head bowed and hands covering its eyes. 

“Weird statue,” she commented, leaving the room without another glance and heading up the nearest staircase she found. She found herself inside what must have been a very tastefully decorated bedroom. There was a four poster bed against the wall, its mauve curtains draped over the sides like it had just flopped down. The bedside tables were matched mahogany, with a Queen Anne desk at the corner of the room, and an armoire and a matching vanity on the side. On the ceiling, the chandelier was still intact. There were no photos, though, and only a few personal items. The room felt warm for some reason, whoever lived here must have been really happy. 

Donna shook her head dismissively, wondering how on earth she could possibly know that. She slowly approached the bed, spotting something on it. Her TARDIS key, which was on a chain securely on her neck, grew slightly warm, as if in warning of something. She came closer to the bed as she recognized what was on the bed. 

It was her shirt, the exact same blue and white striped shirt she wore today. Only this was faded and old, buried under dust and tossed haphazardly on the bed, untouched for god knows how long. 

“This is mad,” she said aloud to nobody in particular, shouting at the old walls around her. “Lots of people must have this kind of shirt.”

Although she highly doubted that ink stain from a badly behaving typewriter ribbon was from manufacturing. She looked at her own side, where the small spot was, almost invisible except to the one that knew where it was. The shirt on the bed had the exact same spot. Donna stepped back, slightly freaked out. 

“Doctor!” she exclaimed, turning suddenly. Her heart suddenly stopped as she came face to face with a smooth, stony face. Its blank eyes were boring right into hers, its mouth formed into a scream with sharp teeth. The statue’s claws were inches from her neck, and Donna couldn’t look away. 

* * *

The Doctor had gone off to investigate the lower floors of the house, wondering what they were supposed to be looking for. If present Donna wasn’t the one who had sent the message, then it had to have been her in the future. But why, though? Was there a version of her in this house somewhere, abandoned and hurt? The thought made his hearts wrench with worry. But there was nothing to indicate the presence of an ‘oh dear surely those Reaper things weren’t here moments ago’ paradox. In fact, everything felt perfectly normal. Creepy, but normal. 

The sonic screwdriver hummed in his hand, indicating a direction that was giving of wavelengths of some alien tech. He’d found the setting after the thing with the gas masks and Rose being generally unimpressed with his general ‘un-Spockness’. He still found the ‘are you my mummy’ bit hilarious, although Donna claimed to have nightmares about children in gas masks when he told her the story. 

But anyway. There was something here. 

In what must have been the kitchen, with all the dust, empty jars of marmalade and the rats skittering around, the Doctor heard something go ‘ding!’ He swirled around, pointing the screwdriver to the possible source of the noise, following it to the table, where he saw a contraption thin gamy and the source of the dinging. It looked like a cross between an old-fashioned voice recorder, a telephone and a TV satellite, with a postcard wedged in between the mechanical folds. It looked old, but the mechanisms had him written all over it. The Doctor took a deep breath as something touched the edges of his consciousness. It was the definite taste of a bootstrap paradox, the kind that left a sour taste on his tongue. 

“Hello,” the Doctor cooed, smiling over at the object. “What are you?”

The thingamabob on the table dinged again, this time more incessantly. What was it detecting?

“Doctor!” 

He didn’t need to be called twice. Grabbing the device with him, the Doctor scampered up to where he heard Donna’s voice call urgently for him, stopping in his tracks when he saw the creature with its hands wrapped around her neck. He felt his two hearts thump erratically in his chest his mind already trying to find a way out, do something to get her away from the Weeping Angel around her throat. He could hear her panicked breathing. Her eyes flickered briefly towards him, and he felt himself panic too, his body reacting quickly. 

“Don’t!” He exclaimed, running to the place behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder to still her movements. The Doctor tried to keep his voice calm, hiding his panic. Oh this was _not_ good. Not good at all. “Don’t blink. Don’t even look away for one second. I’m keeping my eye on it, but don’t blink.”  


“It wasn’t there when I came up here, Doctor,” Donna explained quickly, doing as she was told and keeping an eye on the angel in front of her. Her words stammered, betraying her otherwise straight stance. “I didn’t see it.” 

“It can only move when you can’t see it,” he explained just as fast, his eyes quickly scanning the room. What were they looking for? “Weeping Angels, the lonely assassins, they’re called. They’re quantum locked, so they can’t move while they are seen. One touch is all it takes for them to transport you to the past, eating away the potential energy of your future. I’m sorry Donna Noble. I’m so, so sorry.”  


“What are you sorry for?” Donna asked him, her panic only rising with that statement. He kept his grip firmly on her shoulder, like his sheer will was going to make her stay. “Tell me what’s going to happen, Doctor!” 

“I’ll be right behind you, I promise,” the Doctor said, squeezing her shoulder as he kept his eyes on the three angels that were edging the corner towards them, their hands reaching out for them and their teeth bared. The Doctor hated it when they had teeth. “I won’t just leave you. The Angel’s grip on you is too close, you’re trapped in between its’ hands.”

“Then why don’t you just smash them with, I dunno—a hammer or something?!”  


He wanted to smile, but focused instead on the Angels that were inching closer with each turn of his head. “They’re living creatures, Donna,” he explained, his voice still calm as he edged closer towards her. “You can’t kill them while they’re stone.” 

Donna found herself holding the Doctor’s hand on her shoulder. She needed it, his cool hand beneath hers, letting her know that he was there. She needed to know he was there. He was going to get them out of this, but if he didn’t…she would be glad to go though this with him at her side. 

“What’s going to happen to me, Doctor?”  


“I’ll be right behind you, I promise,” he said, explaining nothing about her question, which was maddening. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “But you have to trust me, Donna. Do you trust me?”

She took a deep breath, careful not to close her eyes, not even for a second. She didn’t even have to think about the answer. 

“Yes.” 

“Blink.”


	3. Chapter 3

"Blink."

She did. She felt her body being tossed into a whirlwind, her eyes shut the entire time. As soon as she felt something solid slam underneath her body, she cried out in pain as it pulsed from her chest to the tips of her toes, her arms just managing to keep her from slamming her face into the ground. It was solid concrete, that much she could tell, but was a bit too disoriented to try and find out anything else. She wanted to throw up. 

Then something fell on top of her, making her go, 'oof' and groan as the thing scrambled off her, speaking at a thousand words per minute and assessing her for injuries. 

"--of course, I had no idea we'd be taken to the exact same place, but at least we're all in in piece, eh?" the voice said, oddly cheerful for someone who had just been touched by a creepy Angel statue in an abandoned house.

"Ow," Donna said in lieu of an answer, dusting herself off as she steadied herself, grabbing the Doctor's arm. Feeling him real and solid under her hand was a bigger relief than she expected, and she sighed deeply.

"Time travel without a proper conduit can make the body feel out of sorts," the Doctor continued on, handing Donna a paper bag he had stuffed into his pocket. "I wouldn't go swimming for at least an hour...well, hour and a half. Jelly Baby?" He asked, nudging the paper bag at her. "They'll do you good."

"Are they medicinal or something, like Harry Potter?" Donna asked, picking a red one out of the bag and chewing on it quickly. She made a face as the chewy candy slowly spread the sugar and sour taste over her mouth. It hadn't helped at all. 

"Medicinal? No, no...but that's a brilliant idea, Donna, I'll keep that in mind," he said, pocketing the Jelly Babies after stuffing one or two or five into his mouth. The Doctor began to walk, his coat billowing behind him as it followed the jaunt in his step. He looked like any ordinary bloke walking down the street with his happy-go-lucky grin. Donna was already looking around, trying to find markers or clues that would help identify their location. The Doctor looked behind him, seeing that Donna was trailing slightly behind. 

"Keep up!" He exclaimed, waving at her to come over to him. Donna sighed and rolled her eyes. You would think she'd only imagined the terror and eerie calm of his voice in Wester Drumlins, talking about Weeping Angels and potential energy. She frowned, walking over to him, scanning his face. There seemed to be nothing to indicate any worry or fear, Donna's own fears were apparently enough for the both of them.

"What's going on, Doctor?" Donna asked, her voice dropped low and serious as they reached a park at the corner of the road. The Doctor led them to a nearby bench, presumably to answer her questions. Instead, he held up a doohickey thing that slightly resembled a telephone and a voice recorder. He shook it slightly, holding it up against his ear.

"What's that then?" Donna asked, her frustration rising quickly. As relieved as she was that the Doctor was here, she needed answers. 

The Doctor frowned, his chin jutting out as he looked carefully at the device in his hand. 

"It's....a thing," he said vaguely. "It apparently goes ding when there's stuff."

He was going to drive her barmy one day, she knew it. Donna rubbed a hand over her temples as as if she was getting the most massive headache ever.

"Doctor, I swear to god—" she began, but she stopped when she saw the cold, hard look that suddenly came to his face. His mood swung so fast Donna was sure to get whiplash. Darkness swirled on his face, making her shiver and completely forget the whole tirade she was about to unleash on the Doctor for his good mood. Sometimes she forgot that he could be a scary alien if he wanted to be—that there were worlds, races and planets out there that simply cowered at the mere mention of him. She just forgot.  

“The message we got to come to Wester Drumlins,” he began, tucking the device into his trans-dimensional coat pocket. “Came from you.”  


“Me?” She asked, her tone going up and loud as quickly as his mood had shifted. “I think I would remember leading us into a HAUNTED HOUSE.”  


“I know that,” the Doctor reassured her, sighing as he continued to watch the people passing in front of them. “That’s why I think it was your future self, sending a message to us now. To get us to the Weeping Angels, then here.”

“Yeah, talking about that, where is…here?” Donna asked, swivelling in her position on the park bench to glance around. She didn’t know why she imagined everything with a nice, sepia tint over it. The street had quite a few people (humans, she thankfully noted) coming in and out of places, smiling at each other in greeting. The park was full of young children playing on the swings and monkey bars. 

“Where do you think?” The Doctor asked. “It’s Chiswick, 1969.”  


“This is Chiswick?!” Donna had exclaimed so fast and loud that it sounded like an expletive, causing heads to turn in their direction, and the Doctor to roll his eyes and gesture her to pipe the hell down. 

Somewhere not too far away, her Nan and Gramps were living in their house, her mother just about to finish secondary school. Her father was out there somewhere too, and Donna didn’t even want to think about it again. The fact that she was here felt wrong, she didn’t belong here. Did the Doctor feel that way about every place he visited? 

“Doctor, won’t this cause some kind of…problem? I mean…I haven’t been born yet or anything, but…”  
  
“Really?” the Doctor asked in what seemed like genuine surprise. Just like that, he was joking around again, his lips curled into a teasing smile that made Donna want to smack it right off his face. She settled for his arm instead, warning him to watch it. The Doctor recoiled in pain, rubbing the spot where she’d hit him. 

“What is it with humans obsessing over their age?” he asked nobody in particular, shaking his head. “I’m nine hundred and three, and you don’t see me going into a tizzy over being thirty sss—“

“I said, _watch it_ ,” Donna snapped again, pointing a menacing finger at him. “Back to the point, if you please.”  


The Doctor blinked for a second, like he’d lost his particular train of thought and was struggling to catch up with it. “We won’t have any problems with paradoxes,” he said quickly, apparently he’d managed to catch up. He stood up again, walking in no particular direction. Donna threw her hands up in the air and followed him anyway. Bloody Martian. “It’s getting the TARDIS here that’s going to prove to be a problem. Sending her across a few meters is already a challenge, sending her over time…well. That’s going to be difficult.”

“Why would those Angels send us here, though?” Donna asked, looking around again like she still couldn’t quite believe where they were. Her fingers blanched in the cold as she shuddered at the memory. “Do you think I sent you the message from 1969?”  


“S’ entirely possible,” the Doctor mused, nodding. He was going dark again, his shoulders squaring, and his fingers tensing. “The Angels are trying to get to the TARDIS. Imagine Donna, all that potential energy stored in a big blue box…what could be, what should and what must not. Enough to feed them forever. But if they get to the TARDIS…it could be disastrous.”

“How so?”  


“The entire universe would be ripped apart.”  


She suddenly understood the agitation in his voice, the darkness in his tone. There was an impending threat to the balance of the universe, and he was stuck in the past without his TARDIS. It was his worst nightmare, and Donna wondered vaguely if he regretted following her here to the past. She bit back the thought before it spilled out of her. Speaking of spills…

“At the house,” she suddenly said, touching the Doctor’s arm, bringing him out of his dark mood. “I saw my shirt thee. And that contraption doohickey you had, it looks a lot like one of those things you cobble together all the time on the TARDIS. Maybe you and I were supposed to come here, to Wester Drumlins, stop the Angels ever coming to Chiswick.”  


The Doctor’s eyebrows went all the way up to his hairline, and his eyes popped open, turning to Donna like she’d just told him she had banana trees in her backyard. 

“Oh you are brilliant, Donna Noble!” he exclaimed, stopping in his tracks and making her crash into him. “We have to get back to that house.”  


It took them a while to get to Wester Drumlins. Donna barely recognized the streets they were running through, but somehow they managed to reach the house. As she ran up towards it, she could see that Wester Drumlins didn’t seem at all haunted in 1969. In fact…it looked quite new. The gardens leading to the gate seemed well maintained, the wrought iron looked so new it practically sparkled in the dimming sunlight. The house itself looked gorgeous. Large and tasteful, but welcoming. It was a large change, after knowing what it was going to become after a few decades. 

The Doctor was first to reach the gate, peeking inside his coat pocket to see if the thing that went ding sensed anything nearby. 

“Coast is clear,” he said, approaching the gate. “Nice place, this, at least it used to be. Were the windows always painted TARDIS blue?”  


Donna looked up and almost laughed. The Doctor was right. For all of the grey stone and white plaster in the house, the window sills were painted a nice, bright blue. She was about to make a comment about it when they heard someone coming towards the gate. It was a couple, laughing together as they held hands, walking through the garden. They couldn’t be more than fifty, the two of them. She was wearing a summer hat appropriate to the season, her tallish frame reaching across the shadows as she held a pair of kelly green garden gloves in her free hand. At her side and telling her jokes was an old man. He walked a little slowly because of a limp, but his eyes were caught in sheer delight as he talked with the woman. She was the first to notice the Doctor waving manically at them. 

“Hello!” He said brightly, smiling as they waved back. 

As they came closer to the gate, Donna felt her heart race in her chest as she gasped. The Doctor turned to her to show his concern. 

“What’s wrong, Donna?” he asked as the woman approached, the man not far behind her. 

“That’s…” she said, the words lost on her tongue as the couple came closer to the gate. “Doctor…that’s my Nan and Gramps.”


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor had no time to react as the couple reached the gate, holding hands and blushing in the chilly autumn day. Wilf looked exactly as he does in Donna's time, bright, cheery blue eyes and droopy face (only slightly less droopy now). Donna knew from the stories her grandfather told her that he'd gotten injured during the war, when he was sent overseas. He still walked with a limp, but here it was a bit more pronounced. His eyes were still bright, still warm with love for his wife. He would lose that bit, Donna noted sadly. Once her Gran had died, he would never be the same, but he would try. 

"Hello," her grandmother chirped, her smile seemed brighter than sunshine as she took off her hat. Her wild auburn curls shimmered like a wild nest of hair on her head, thinning like a halo. Eva Mott was all softness and warmth, laugh lines starting to form around her eyes as she studied the Doctor and Donna through the wrought iron gates. There was something proper and elegant about her, 'a real lady' as her Grandfather had fondly said. "Can we help you?"

"Yes, hello!" The Doctor grinned, putting his hands in his coat pockets, tiptoeing slightly as he rocked on his heels. He looked incredibly delighted to see Wilf and Eva. "We were hoping to inquire about the house, to rent or...escrow or mortgage? I have absolutely no idea, but we'd like to live there, don't we, Donna? In Wester Drumlins?"

Donna had been so caught up in staring face to face at her grandparents that she'd completely missed the Doctor's tattling. She blinked at him, and then at the Motts, who looked expectantly at her. 

"Right," she agreed. Generally it was a good idea to just agree with whatever the Doctor said, especially when they were in the past. Fixed points and revealing future information was riskier then, not that she seemed to care when they met Agatha Christie. "Yeah."

The Doctor seemed surprised at her lack of anything more to add. " _Molto bene,_ " he said, making sure that the two were focused on him instead of the shock and confusion on Donna's face. 

"I'm John...Smith, or Smithy of you like. No, scratch that, I don't like Smithy. Just John will do. Just John, sounds like the name for a sitcom, eh?" he said this very quickly, grinning at Wilf and Eva like they were his captive audience. "But anyway, John Smith, that's me."

Donna hadn't even realized that his hand was on her back until she was being shuffled forward like a shy little schoolgirl introduced to strangers. "And this is Donna, my...er...partner."

"Partner?" Donna suddenly quipped, raising an eyebrow at him. He held his hands up innocently. The Motts were free to make of that what they would, but he was sure they would be more understanding of that than 'my best mate who Also lives with me but no, not we're not married.'

He trailed off, suddenly at a loss as to what to say next. But Eva Mott's eyes (hers were exactly like Donna's the Doctor noted, fierce and bright) had already widened, immediately opening the gate of them to step into the threshold.

"Do come in, John, Donna!" She exclaimed, closing the gates behind them as they started to walk back to the house. Pushing some of her wild hair out of her face, Eva patted her sides as if she were looking for something. She glanced over at her husband.

"Fred, would you happen to have--oh ta," she said affectionately, squeezing her husband's hand as she accepted a set of keys from him. Donna didn't know that her Nan called her granddad Fred. She couldn't help but smile at the exchange of affection between them, feeling a strange, dulling ache in her chest. 

Eva was still smiling as she held the keys up to the Doctor. "Here you go dear, as promised," she said, taking the Doctor's hand and pressing the keys into them when he just looked at her blankly.

"Sorry...what?" the Doctor asked as they resumed their walk up to the mansion. Eva used her own set of keys to get inside. Donna had to stop by the doorway to properly look at the house. They had entered through the side, apparently, and were met by the conservatory. The room was light and airy, gorgeous floral wallpaper seemed to blend in with the gardens outside. The space was still pretty much empty, the chandelier almost sparkling as it was touched by the setting sunlight. Donna quickly realized it was cold, though. No heat.

"A lot of the rooms in the house are still unfurnished, so you're strapped to the basics, I'm afraid," Eva said, giving the Doctor and Donna a quick tour of the kitchen, the bedroom with the one bed where the Angels would attack them in the future, a bathroom and a closet for linens and things.

"Doctor, why did my gran give us keys to the haunted house?" She whispered at her companion as they walked back down to the empty lounge, while Wilf was in deep, hushed conversation with his wife. They were nodding to each other wholeheartedly, holding hands. The Doctor smiled fondly at them as their silhouettes formed on the floor of the house.

"No idea," the Doctor replied. 

"You think it was you? Well, not you, I mean like you in 1969? If I was able to send you a message now from the future, couldn't you in the past have arranged for this?" 

The Doctor was just about to tell her that he would have remembered giving Wilf or Eva instructions about the house for his future self when Wilf turned to them.

"Did you say you were a Doctor?" He asked after Doctor and Donna were told about the electricity and how they didn't have central heating yet. "The hospital up the road could use one..."

"Oh, he's not a proper medical doctor," Donna piped in, nudging the Doctor's ribs (although with their height difference, it was more like the side of his stomach) with her elbow. She had to say something before the Doctor "He's one of those brainy sort of doctors who are bloody useless in a medical emergency. Phds in everything _but_ medicine."

"I've been known to be quite handy in the past in the face of a medical emergency," he said defensively, wanting to remind Donna about the time he'd treated a pandemic outbreak of bovine pox with just a Jelly Baby and a piece of string coated in Medastellar water. "I'll remember that the next time you get injured reaching for your hatbox, Donna.”

His companion turned to him with a glare, as if daring him to do just that. They had dropped in to see Princess Diana and Prince Charles' wedding (the Doctor had lost a bet) and Donna had needed her hat, which the TARDIS had perched precariously on top of her closet. Long story short, she ended up with a sprained ankle and not visiting the queen after all. 

"Oi, which one of us fainted when the woman at the zoo went into labor?" Donna asked, referring to their little side trip to an intergalactic zoo on New Earth after Pompeii, where an Aviary was stealing clothes and bodies and such to build her nest prior to giving birth, live, without eggs. It wasn't one of the Doctor's best moments, and Donna knew it. 

Wilf studied the two carefully, chuckling as they continued to argue. Watching them banter was like watching a sitcom on the telly, and it amused him endlessly. 

"How long have you two been married?" He asked as the new tenants of Wester Drumlins practically bashed heads over nothing. Their simultaneous twist of the head in surprise at him would have garnered a _lot_ of laughs during comedy hour. 

Confusion, surprise and slight annoyance flashed across Donna's face. _Not you too, Gramps!_ She thought to herself, practically throwing her arms up in surrender. If the universe thought that this would be a colossally funny joke, she didn't agree. She opened her mouth to begin her regular spiel of "no, we're not married, never, never _ever_ ," (it was second nature to her now, even if wasn’t exactly true anymore…was it?) when the Doctor beat her to the punch, grabbing her hand and swinging it awkwardly. It was a nice feeling, having his hand in hers, even if they were standing like five year olds in a playground.

"Oh, little over a year, two tops." The Doctor chimed a little too enthusiastically. "Stole her away from her wedding, saved her from a spider...well, giant spider, really. Married her on a roof in London, right Donna?"

_More like biodamped,_ she thought, fighting the urge to roll her eyes. Was the whole incident with the Racnoss just two years ago? To her it felt like a lifetime of running and rolling around in the TARDIS. But what was this about them being married? She was about to slap him for it when he turned to her and just...beamed. God, he was brilliant. Like twins suns on a planet she hadn't seen yet. He looked so sure of himself, so happy. More than he had been since the events on Midnight. 

She blinked back the image of him, crumpled and broken, and decided he could have his fun, just this once. He had followed her here, after all. Maybe she could have a bit of fun while she was at it, too.

"Yeah," she said, grinning and bumping her shoulder against him. "Two years of being stuck with him can drive you bonkers," she giggled, letting go of his hand to give his bum a particularly hard slap, making the Doctor jump and yelp. It was the kind of slap she was supposed to have dispensed on his cheek, but this other cheek did quite well too. Completely inappropriate in front of her grandparents, in 1969 no less, but she didn't care. "Best two years of my life, though."

Wilf blinked at them, but his surprise melted into a laugh after. "That never goes away, young 'uns like you," he said, stIll smiling. He'd seen a bit of American television when he was stationed abroad, and these two were a regular Lucy and Desi. So adorable. He turned towards his wife, who was fussing over closing the curtains of the conservatory. 

"Eva, darling, what'd you reckon?" Wilf asked, shuffling towards her. "Shall we invite our new tenants to dinner?" 

"Yeeeeeah, about that," the Doctor interrupted, rubbing at the nape of his neck. Donna knew that this meant he was in an awkward or frustrating situation, not quite sure how to manage it. Nice to know he still managed to show a bit of humility, even if it was involuntary. "Donna and I...well...we've sort of hit a bit of a rough patch...materially."

"What my husband means to say," Donna said, finding that playing the role of his wife was absolutely hilarious to her, and decided to play it in full. She placed her arm around his  and apologetically smiled at her grandmother. "Is that we can't pay you. We just lost everything to a group of...bad people," she said, hoping she wasn't being too vague. "We plan to pay you, of course, eventually, but--"

Eva held up a hand, a gesture Donna realized, her own mother did when she was younger. “No worries, love. It’s all been taken care of by that…fellow that came by the other day.”

That got their attention. 

“What fellow?” Donna asked in confusion, as she unlooped her arm from the Doctor’s. He rubbed the spot slightly, like he had just discovered that he had it. Eva seemed to take all of this in stride, shaking out her curly hair. 

“You see, I take care of this house part time,” she explained to them. It was already dark outside, and Wilf had gone ahead to the house to get something ready for dinner. “Those who want to rent it usually go through me, you see. About a week ago, a man…Scottish, I believe, and he wore the most interesting clothing! Like a magician of some kind…”  


The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline at that. He always seemed to know when someone was describing him. And the way Eva just described this yet-unknown regeneration, something in him just said, _yeah, that’s me alright._

“He was quite rude, I remember clearly. Kept telling me to shut up, but he was keen to rent Wester Drumlins. He gave me six months worth of rent and said that if someone named John Smith wanted to rent the house, the money was to be used to pay their rent. When I asked, who John Smith was, he simply called me a pudding-brain and left. So when you introduced yourselves…”

Eva looked at Donna in slight surprise. The Doctor’s companion was too busy trying not to laugh at the idea of him turning into a rude Scottish magician. 

“Sorry, she’s just…” the Doctor said, pulling Donna behind him so she could get a grip of herself. He gave her a quick, exasperated glare as she guffawed. He smiled politely at Eva. “Anyway,” he said, waving a hand in front of him, as if to dismiss what he was about to say. “That was my…father-in-law. Very protective of his only daughter, travels quite a lot.”  


“Your father-in-law?” Eva said in surprise, glancing at Donna to see if she looked anything like the magician. 

“Yep!” The Doctor said, popping the ‘p’ so she would know that the discussion was closed. “So we’ll…er…see you for dinner?”  


Her face brightened at the thought and she nodded eagerly at the couple. “Oh yes. Our house is just at the end of the drive way, with a blue door. Come as soon as you like, once you settle in.”  


With nothing more than a smile and a quick glance around the now darkened conservatory, Eva Mott smiled, one of those special little smiles she had when she knew something others didn’t and disappeared behind the door. The Doctor sighed and turned to Donna, whose expression had changed. She was now looking at the closed door like someone very important had just left. But when she realised the Doctor was looking at her, she smiled. 

“So…” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and arising an eyebrow at him. “Married on a roof in London?”  


“Yeeeah, sorry,” The Doctor said sheepishly, scratching the back of his neck again. “Was the only thing I could think of on short notice. I don’t think your grandparents would be too pleased to find out you moved into a house with a skinny alien.”  


“The way Nana was looking at you, I don’t think she would have minded,” Donna laughed, passing him to go upstairs to the bedroom. It was the only furnished one in the house, and she knew that they would have to argue about bed arrangements later. But that could wait. She also knew that the Doctor was being considerate of her—people already looked at her kind of funny when they find out that she was single in 2009, what more in 1969?

“Grans love me,” he said with a smile, following her into the room. “Don’t you think?” 

“Watch it!” She yelled at him from the bathroom, after she’d flipped on the switch. She realised that she didn’t have clothes, no toothbrush, nothing. She frowned, trying to wrap her head around the fact that she was in 1969, and not an alien planet. Somehow alien planet was easier to believe. 

“No such luck with mums, though,” Donna added, remembering her mother screaming about an axe the last time they were on Earth as she came back into the room. She looked at the closet and checked out the desk for anything, checking the water and the lights. For a haunted house, it was actually quite cozy. She turned her head to the Doctor, who had his hands in his pockets, studying her carefully. 

“You okay?” He asked. 

Donna’s lips curled up into what she hoped was a reassuring smile, even if she knew it wasn’t going to do much. The Doctor could read her like a map from her bedroom to her bathroom. Ever since their Disneyland trip where their relationship became being just mates to a little more than that (nope, she couldn’t get through this without sounding like a teenager), but even before that, he knew her. Probably more than she knew herself, which was unsettling and wonderful at the same time.

She flopped down on the bed, stretching her legs forward. “What are we doing, Spaceman?” she asked, blinking up at him. “And how are we going to get out of this?”  


The Doctor frowned, sensing that this wasn’t what was bothering her. But he decided not to press the matter, and sat next to her on the bed. 

“We need to get the TARDIS back,” he said, running his hand over his face in frustration. She could see it on his face. He hated that he didn’t have the TARDIS, and again she felt horrible that he followed her here. “The Angels aren’t here. I think this doohickey that goes ding can tell,” he said, holding it up again after he fished it out of his pocket. Donna looked at it, frowning. 

“You made this?” She asked. It looked like the kind of doohickeys he made all the time.

“No,” He said, then his expression changed into one that went into deep thinking. “Well…maybe I did. Or I will, or didn’t? Hmm. Ontological paradox,” he said off-handedly, waving the device around with his hand. “I wonder what else is…”

“What?” Donna asked, blinking at him in confusion.   


“Nothing, nevermind,” the Doctor said, shaking his head. “But we have to prepare ourselves to stay here while I work this out.”

“But we figure it out, don’t we?” Donna asked, “You heard Nan…Eva say it, a Scottish bloke in magician’s clothes paid for us to stay here. That’s you, isn’t it? Future you?” 

“We don’t know that,” he lied. “Time isn’t linear, Donna, it’s not just set of cause and effect. It’s this…thing that can bend and fold and change and alter based on certain factors. We have to figure this out or else—“  


“Yeah, yeah, universe exploding, yada yada yada,” Donna interrupted, waving her hand off so he could stop talking. Now it was her turn to stand up and look at him. “So, brief recap. We’re stuck in 1969 with my grandparents, with no TARDIS, no heating and no clothes or food. We can’t get back, and we might have to somehow stop quantum-locked stone cherubs from coming here, yeah?”  


“Yep,” he responded, sighing. Then he smiled at her. “Shall we head over to dinner?”

“Sure,” Donna said, standing up and walking to the door. She looked around the house, appraising it further. The garden was lovely at night, Eva did an amazing job at keeping it trim and proper. It was autumn, and in the cool night, the red, orange and browns of the fallen leaves fell on the walk. Donna realized they were walking in a path of blazing silver. The Doctor reached for her hand, squeezing slightly. 

Donna was about to say something when a thought popped into her mind. She suddenly found herself giggling. 

“I just realised something,” she said, bumping her shoulder against his as they walked. “It’s 1969.”

“Hmm?” The Doctor asked, seemingly lost in thought. 

“My mum lived with my parents until she got married,” she pointed out, feeling the giggles arising from inside without provocation. “Which was in 1972.”

“Oh no,” the Doctor said, the colour draining slightly from his face as he realised what Donna was saying. They made it to the Mott’s doorstep soon, and Wilf was already waiting for them, speaking to a young blonde woman who seemed to be rolling her eyes at every atom that swirled in front of her. 

“Ah, John and Donna!” He exclaimed happily, raising his hands in welcome of his guests. “This is my daughter Sylvie. Sweetheart, say hi to the new tenants of Wester Drumlins!”

Donna couldn’t hold back the biggest smile on her face as Sylvia Mott turned to the new people, smacking her gum in her mouth. That quickly changed though when she saw the Doctor. Her eyes brightened and she smiled sweetly, like the cat that had a hapless mouse in its claws. 

“Hiya,” she said, paying no attention to Donna as the Doctor balked slightly. “Welcome to Chiswick.”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that Donna's grandmother is named Eileen in 'Beautiful Chaos,' (really good story, read it if you have the chance!) but the name Eva just kind of grew on me, so it's stuck! Are the books/audiobooks accepted as canon? 
> 
> Anyway, off to watch What We Did On Our Holiday!


	5. Chapter 5

“Never, never, never again!” the Doctor barked, marching away from the house at the end of the driveway with a blue door. It was the end of the night, after what Donna thought was a wonderful dinner with her family (not that they knew that, of course). Eva had made a lovely meal of roast beef and potato salad, the kind that Donna realised she hadn’t had since coming on board the TARDIS. Eva, smoking a cigarette like the world's classiest lady, told them about the house, and how she came to be its caretaker. Wilf was as entertaining and wonderful as ever, only too happy to tell the Doctor stories about his time overseas during the war. The way he talked, you would think he’d gone to a great big party in the Pacific. They talked about the stars and asteroids, meteor showers and telescopes.  "Discover a planet, that's what I'd like to do," Wilf declared over his plate of beef and potatoes, roast turnip on the side. He liked a nice turnip. "Great big universe out there, bound to be plenty of planets waiting to be named, eh?"

"Oh you have no idea," the Doctor gushed, getting that faraway look he had when he thought about not being on Earth. Donna didn't miss that look, and tried to ignore a spasm of guilt in her. 

While they had teas and coffees in the living room, Eva had put on some music over a record player and began slow dancing with Wilf, the both of them smiling and laughing as they did. Donna couldn’t help but look up at them, feeling warmth spread across her chest as she smiled up at them. She felt like she was watching a childhood memory. 

“When we get out of here, we are never going back to 1969, Donna! Never ever!” the Doctor repeated. He somehow managed to jiggle the gate to the Drumlins open with one hand before stomping back in, despite his hands being full with a trolley bag full of old clothes that their rent. Donna watched his retreating form and started to giggle, balancing her own pile in her hands.

“What’s wrong with 1969?” Donna shot back, kicking the gate closed behind her. The Doctor was already halfway into the house, dumping the food in the kitchen before making his way upstairs to the bedroom without giving the conservatory a second look. She bit back the feeling of guilt that had wracked her each time the Doctor uttered a word of complaint, focusing instead on putting away the food her grandparents hefted into her arms. 

“Your mother,” the Doctor said flatly, already back downstairs with a scowl on his face. Donna laughed, placing the food on the counter. They were mostly canned foods, but they would survive. The Doctor stood by the door as Donna put away the food, watching her like he did earlier that evening. 

"I mean, I know she can't help it, this regeneration is really quite...foxy," the Doctor began, and Donna unleashed an eye roll so massive that he worried her eyeballs were flying off their sockets.  

"Bit full of ourself tonight, are we?" Donna teased. He laughed and came over to join her in the kitchen, drumming his finger impatiently on the counter as he watched her sort the food, methodically. The domesticity made his skin tingle. 

"Oi, it's not just me!" He insisted. "You remember what I said about Martha, and Sarah Jane might have mentioned...then there's you, of course."

"Me?" Donna asked, chuckling as she out the bread aside. 

"Yes you, Donna Noble. Don't forget I've been to Disneyworld with your future self, and while you didn't exactly say it, I knew you wanted me," he said with a grin, opening the marmalade jar nearby and scooping out a huge dollop with his fingers. Once the jam was in his mouth, he made a small sound of satisfaction, making Donna look at him with...

Well. The Doctor wasn't quite sure what to make of that look. Two parts disbelief and one part…well. He hadn’t seen her look at him like that ever. Her eyes drifted over to his marmalade-stained lips, and he found himself swallowing. Donna’s expression remained a mystery to him, until her lips curled into the same cat got the cream grin her mother had that given him that evening. Only this time it wasn’t disconcerting or strange or downright terrifying. It actually made him swallow again. 

With her eyes trained still on his marmalade stained lips, Donna leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, spreading the jam around more before licking the last of the marmalade from his lips slowly and deliberately, dragging her tongue across his bottom lip. 

The Doctor found himself leaning back against the kitchen counter, shock on his face at her coy smile. There it was, that look on her face, the one that nobody had ever seemed to see. He could see Donna, confident, happy like someone had finally listened to her. 

“Don’t forget,” she told him with a grin. “I’ve been to Disneyworld with _your_ future self,” she said, as if daring him to do something about it. While their current relationship was full of things yet unsaid, he let her be the one to push the envelope, define boundaries. He was the one who got the ball rolling, and he let her have full control. 

“Oh, and what did I say?” The Doctor asked, matching her grin, despite being backed into a corner. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Donna answered, kissing his cheek really loudly before heading upstairs to sort out the clothes that Eva and Wilf gave them. She knew the Doctor had no plans of changing clothes anytime soon (she was absolutely positive that there was something alien/Martian-y about his suits), but the gesture wasn’t lost on either of them. She pulled a nightgown from the pile, and a dressing gown to go with it. She decided against a shower and dove right in between the sheets, stretching languidly. Hard to believe just a few hours ago, she was in bed in the TARDIS and yelling at the Doctor to go away. 

 

“Donna! Donna! Donna! Donna!” He heard him yelling, thundering up the stairs like a madman. Donna groaned, rolling over to her side and covering her head with the duvet. If it was actually important, like timeThe covers were kind of warm, but her toes were cold. Then he was bouncing excitedly on the bed, flopping backwards next to her on the bed, grinning. “Donna,” he said finally. “I remembered something.”  


“Good for you, Granddad,” She grumbled, not realising how tired she was until she’d fallen into bed. The Doctor was fishing something out of his trans-dimensional pocket…really deep into his trans-dimensional pocket. 

“Aw, hush, I’m barely a thousand years old,” he says, making Donna roll her eyes as he finally got whatever what it was from his pocket. It was a purple plastic folder, and it popped out of his pocket along with a rubber duck and one of those wooden head massager things. She knew there was no stopping him while he was on his mad thought train, so she threw off the duvet and sat up, looking down at him seriously 

“I realised we’ve found ourselves stuck in 1969,” he said, tossing the rubber duck and the massager aside and shaking the folder in her face like it was the most important thing in the world.Donna could see the purple plastic flickering in the dim lighting in their bedroom in 1969. 

“No kidding,” she said, curling her toes against the the space between the Doctor’s trousers and his socks, taking all the warm she could get. He yelped, jerking backwards and making her laugh.  


“Donnn-naaa,” he whined, pulling his socks up higher. “Anyway, when I came to my senses about remembering to be in 1969 and I realised that I had this!” 

He shook the plastic envelope again, and Donna snuggled her toes under his trouser ankles again. This time though, he let her, smiling smugly. “I’m sleepy and it’s cold, Spaceman, get on with it,” she said impatiently, but he could see that she was kind of enjoying this. 

“It’s an instruction manual,” the Doctor said, taking out the files, photographs, letters and a DVD from inside, scattering it all on the bed. “For when I’m stuck in 1969. Someone gave it to me when I was with Martha handling…this…thing. One thing. Well. Four things. Four things and a lizard. It was quite complicated, had to shoot quite a few arrows before we made contact with—“ 

“What?” She asked in confusion. “An instruction manual…for when you’re stuck…in nineteen sixty flipping nine?” She said these words slowly and deliberately, making the emphasis that this wasn’t  


“Yeah!” he answered enthusiastically, his eyes wild as he looked over at the documents and stuff on the bed. He looked like a kid let loose in a toy shop, excited at the possibilities of finding a way out, once he figured out the instructions. “Brilliant, isn’t it? I love that about time travel, things happening to you in the right order, doesn’t mean it’s in the same order for everyone else. I have to figure out some of the kinks, work out the details, but it should help us out a bit!”

Donna found her eyes directed right at the photograph of the stone Angel. Even with its hands over its eyes, it managed to send the chills down her spine. The Doctor, now too excited and keyed up to fall asleep, grabbed the photo, studying it closely. Donna knew he wasn’t going to bed anytime soon, so tucked her toes back under the covers and fell asleep to the sound of him muttering to himself, brainy specs and all.  

* * *

 

The next morning, Donna woke up to warm air wafting into her face, slowly and and softly, like a warm electric fan blowing into a warm room. Her eyes fluttered open slowly only to have them grow wide in surprise at the vision in front of her. 

He was asleep. Somehow he’d fallen asleep while looking through his magic fix-it kit, and his face was resting twelve inches from hers. His brainy specs were still on, skewed as his cheek rest on the pillow while he just…breathed on her. Donna smiled, brushing a few strands of hair away from his face as she just watched him. 

God, she’d turned into a soppy lovestruck teenager, going loony over a boy. 

“I can feel you watching me,” the Doctor mumbled, smiling behind the closed eyes. 

“Let a girl have her moment, eh?” Donna pointed out, rolling her eyes before hitting him in the face with a corner of her duvet before coming out of bed and going downstairs to the kitchen to sort out their breakfast. The Doctor watched her for a moment before taking off his glasses and following her down. 

It took a while for Donna to set up their breakfast—she suddenly misses the TARDIS with all its one-touch machines and instant toasters. She burnt a couple of pieces, but they managed to have a decent meal out of a few pieces of bread and juice out of the tangerines from the bag. The Doctor had apparently snacked on the marmalade again sometime in the middle of the night, as it was licked clean. They still had butter with their toast, and just enough tea for the morning. Donna frowned, thinking as she placed the toast on the table, calculating and rationing the food in her mind. 

“Penny for them?” the Doctor asked, mid-chew as he watched her perturbed expression. Donna sighed and sat across him, nursing her tea as she passed him more toast. 

 “I was thinking about getting a job,” she said to him, sighing slightly as she sipped her cup. “Like a secretary or a shopgirl or something. We can’t live on handouts, and I wouldn’t want to, really.”

The Doctor frowned. The idea of Donna going back to her regular life to a boring old job (even if it was in a different era, a job was a job) perturbed him. She was more than that, better than that. But he couldn’t deny that she had a point. 

“I could always rob a cashpoint if you like,” he said, holding up the sonic screwdriver and grinning. Then a though occurred to him and his lip curled in thought. “Did they have cashpoints in 1969?”  


“I think everyone was too busy trying to get to the moon to think about cashpoints,” Donna pointed out, laughing before clearing the dishes. 

“Right,” the Doctor said, frowning as he pat himself down, pulling the psychic paper out his suit pocket. “Here. Go forth and be brilliant in a boring Earth job. Something in astrophysics maybe? You know most of the things they haven’t found out yet anyway.”

“Doesn’t that break the rules of time travel or something?” She asked, raising an eyebrow at him. “Besides, I’ll need to get something that pays daily so we don’t die of the cold or hunger before the end of the week, so temp jobs are the best option.” Donna sighed in slight disappointment before she took the leather wallet, looking down at the psychic paper. The Doctor frowned slightly seeing her distress. 

“Donna Noble,” he said. “You’re an absolute star.”

“Oh shut up you,” she told him, unable to hide the blush on her cheeks as she flipped the leather wallet over in her hand. She realised it was the first time she got to use it or hold the psychic paper in her hand. She looked down at the piece of paper inside the leather wallet, wondering how she would get the message to the Doctor in the future. He must have seen her frowning, because he asked her what she could see written on the paper. 

 “It says,” she said, holding it up to him. “It just has a lot of Xs and Os on it.”

“Yes it does,” the Doctor cooed, resting his head on his chin as he looked up at her, just about as lovestruck as she was that morning. She rolled her eyes, knowing that he was just teasing her. 

“With love from the Doctor, 1969,” she read again, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. “What is this? Since when was the psychic paper so flirty?”  


“It shows the bearer what they want to see,” the Doctor pointed out, raising her eyebrows up and down suggestively at her. 

“Well, then your psychic paper is broken,” Donna replied, slipping it into the pocket of her dressing gown before going upstairs to have a shower. She emerged dressed in a slim, knee cut dress in deep navy blue, with a pair of sensible shoes to go underneath her stockings. She’d managed to put her hair up and away from her face, but felt a little bare without a brooch or necklace. 

So she went out, leaving the Doctor with a reminder not to finish all the food, to take care of himself and not burn anything, or take the toaster apart…well, those were just a few in her list. She really felt like a wife now. 

“I’ll be back later,” she told him as they walked together to the door. She’d taken his coat and wrapped it around herself to keep warm in the balmy autumn. The Doctor insisted on walking her to the gate at least.

“I’ll figure this out, Donna, I promise,” the Doctor vowed, squeezing her hand as they made it to their wrought iron gate. “We’ll be back in the TARDIS before you know it.”  


He missed seeing her wince as her guilt bit down her her again. Sure she needed something to do while the Doctor figured everything out, but she’d decided to get a job out of guilt. Anything she could do to make him feel more…at ease with the idea that they were stuck here. 

“Yeah,” she said, smiling a little at him. “See you later, Doctor.”  


“See you,” he said, waving a little and waiting by the gate until she stepped into a bus without hesitation. Then he sighed, putting his hands in his pockets. 

He had a lot of things to do today, but he let himself have that small moment, watching her leave, to carry with him through the day. He breathed a deep sigh. He felt the loss of the TARDIS profoundly, and the thought of Donna leaving him alone for most of the day almost drove him mad. But she needed this. They both needed the break, even with the threat of the Weeping Angels pressed on them. After Messaline, Midnight, the Library…a little bit of home an domesticity would be good for her. 

“Molto bene,” the Doctor said, more to himself this time, as he headed into the house. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A relatively short chapter that took me ages to write! Yikes. :/ More plot to come in the next chapter, I promise!


	6. Chapter 6

Donna walked down Chiswick High Street in a relatively good mood. It had taken most of the morning, but she’d managed to find a job as a secretary for a local advertising agency. The whole thing seemed straight out of a movie, with the outfits and the occasional hippie giving her a smile. The big boss of the agency had been sufficiently impressed with Donna’s typing skills (typewriters cowered at the might of the Supertemp) and her cleavage and had hired her on the spot. He was being so obvious about it she wanted to roll her eyes and scream, but a job was a job so she didn’t complain. Yet. 

She found a bit of money in the pocket of the Doctor’s coat, which was surprising. His pockets, she had come to think, were like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter. All she had to do was reach in, and the thing she needed just kind of…fell into her hand. Like when she needed a pen earlier in the office, or when she needed to flash the psychic paper when they asked for credentials. 

So with the bit of money she found grasped into her hand, Donna bought Coke, fish and chips from a nearby stand, watching the people pass by from her spot in the bus stop. Eating lunch from a bench in 1969 wasn’t as surreal as surreal could get, but there was something pleasant about it. She had to admit, she’d missed this part of human life, the quiet moments around things she recognised and knew. She’d given it all of that up when she met the Doctor, but it was nice that she still could have the moment now. 

“Is this seat taken, ginge?” a voice asked, and Donna turned at the sound of the voice, squinting a little into the sunlight. The figure stepped in front of the sunlight, and her eyes quickly adjusted to see a strapping young man, no more than twenty five grinning at her. He looked like John Travolta’s doppelgänger, all greasy haired and cool in his leather jacket and jeans. He had a cigarette in his mouth, and Donna just knew that would be the reason for his early demise. But they didn’t know about that in the sixties, did they? He had a kind face, despite his cool air. He indicated the seat beside Donna. 

“What did you just—No. Not taken.” she said, smiling amicably before returning to her food. She’d forgotten that being ginger was still a thing. Well, it was still a thing in her time, but not so much out in the universe where people could have six arms and purple tentacles. 

“Thanks,” he said, slipping into the seat beside her. Donna tried her best to ignore the bloke while she finished her lunch. But then she noticed that he was…watching her. It was a little unsettling. 

“Something on my face, buck-o?” She asked him point blank. 

“Those chips look good,” he said, smoothing his light blonde hair away from his face. “Mind if I just…”

“Oi, you’re not a pikey, are you?” Donna asked, raising an eyebrow at him. 

“Doll, do I look like a pikey to ‘ya?” he asked, meeting her raised eyebrow, turn for turn. Then Donna realised that she’d seen this particular bloke before. She realised that she’d seen that exact face and that jacket, that wry smile. She’d seen it in sepia, frozen on a piece of paper. She knew that cigarette in his mouth would eventually be the reason why he would never see her out in the stars, waving at her like her Granddad had. Apparently, she’d inherited her sass from the other side of the family.

Geoffrey Noble was sitting beside her in a bus stop, asking for chips. 

Donna shook her head quickly. She didn’t understand. It was 1969, she was sure that was the year her parents were supposed to meet and fall in love, the whole nine yards. So why was her Mum obsessed with the Doctor and her Dad picking up gingers in bus stops? 

_Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey,_ Donna heard the Doctor’s voice in her head. It sounded like something he would say, or something he’d said often. She made the conclusion and resolution in her mind, deciding that if she was going to be stuck in 1969 in a haunted house, in a boring job with a sexist boss and with creepy stone aliens after the TARDIS, there had to be a reason for it. At least the Doctor was with her. 

“Right,” she said in a determined voice, talking more to herself than to the boy in front of her. She swallowed down the lump of guilt that built at her throat every time she remembered how the Doctor had placed his hand on her shoulder and told her to blink. “You take this bus everyday?”  


“Yes m’am,” he said, winking at her. He knew she was probably older than him, but Geoffrey was always one for taking chances. Plus there was something about this stranger that kept his eyes glued to her. Their bus arrived and Donna found herself shaking her head. 

“See you tomorrow then, Noble,” she said, winking back at him in a less than seductive way (she made absolutely sure of that) before hopping on the bus without a second glance. Geoffrey realised he hadn’t given her his name, and bounded into the bus eagerly. He was started to realise that Donna was nowhere to be seen, and it wasn’t until the bus had departed the station did he notice her sitting back in the bench with her chips, laughing at him. 

* * *

When Donna got off her bus stop, she was surprised to find the Doctor sitting on the bench and waiting for her. She had never known him to wait for anything in his life, and the sight made a giggle bubble from her throat. He was shivering, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his trousers as his knee bobbled up and down. He had a look of intense concentration on his face, as if willing for Donna or the TARDIS to materialise right in front of him. Donna wouldn’t have been surprised if it did. 

“Don’t stare too hard, Spaceman, you’ll give yourself a headache,” Donna said, standing in front of him with her hands in the deep pockets of his brown coat. The Doctor looked up at her in surprise, his features turning warmer and more affectionate. She didn’t miss the way he bit at the corner of his lip when she remembered that she was wearing his coat. 

“Sorry,” Donna said quickly, moving her hands over the tie on front to loosen the brown coat on her. “You must be cold, here I—”

“No, no, don’t,” the Doctor insisted, holding her hands to still her movements. “I was just…it looks good on you. My coat, I mean.”

“Oh. Thanks,” Donna said, smiling awkwardly as he stood up. They both started to walk back to the house. Although it was nearly teatime, the sky was still bright, kind of strange to have such a log autumn day. Their shoulders bumped into each other quite often, but neither of them seemed to mind. Donna realised that they had never been this quiet. Ever. Which was odd for both of them. 

“I found a job,” she spoke up, starting a conversation with him that seemed so oddly domestic that it felt weird saying it. “Secretary at an ad agency. They can pay me by the day, so…”  


The Doctor said nothing. Donna decided to switch topics. 

“Oh, here’s the psychic paper back,” Donna said, shuffling her hand into the pockets a little until the leather wallet slid into her hand. “I also owe you a pound for my lunch.”  


“I have money in there?”  The Doctor asked in amusement, looking in confusion at his pockets. “That’s weird, I don’t remember putting money in my coat. Doubloons maybe, a couple of gold bricks, but not money.”  


“Doubloons?” Donna echoed, raising an eyebrow at him. “You have actual doubloons in here?” She shook the sides of the coat, trying to see if they jingled or jangled. They didn’t. 

“Yeah, Magellan might have given it to me awhile back,” the Doctor said, scratching his chin as he searched his vast memory banks of recollection. “Sometime in between looking for the natives' god Bathala and looking for you, which turned out to be the same thing.”  


“Oh no need to remind me of that,” Donna shuddered, despite the coat keeping her warm. They had landed in Magellan's last battle, where the natives found an alien stone that poisoned adonna, eho they thought was their goddess. She could still feel the gold poison running though her body. She couldn’t deny that it was nice though, lying in a room with silk sheets and sugar cane juice, being fanned and looking over a fantastic view of the beach and the mountains. 

“I would have thought that you liked it, being pampered and revered,” the Doctor pointed out. “You deserve it, really.”

“Is this your subtle way of flirting with me?” Donna asked, laughing off the suggestion. She didn't miss the hurt on his face, like it hurt him to see her batt off the idea of her being adored. This time she grabbed his arm, hooking it with hers and squeezing slightly. “Because I’m sorry to say, Doctor, you are shockingly bad at it.”

“Oi, I can be charming and flirty when I want to be,” he countered, recovering as Donna laughed. They approached the gate to their house, big and assuming in the middle of an otherwise quiet street. Donna glanced to her right, at the small red house with the blue door. Inside she could see Eva making dinner in the kitchen, laughing at something Donna couldn’t see. She spotted Sylvia walking to the house from the back, climbing the drainpipe and vines like a cat burglar, slamming the window to her room closed before anyone noticed. 

“We were invited to dinner with them again,” the Doctor suddenly said, apropos to their current stop. “I could tell them you’re knackered—“  


“No, it’s okay,” Donna said, smiling up at him. “Wouldn’t want to miss a chance to see my Mum flirt with you.”  


“ _Molto bene_ ,” he said in the most sarcastic tone possible, and Donna actually laughed, pulling his arm as they walked back up to the house. She would ask him about her plans, and his plans later. For now, they had to go to dinner with the Motts. 

This, Donna realised, was only the second best thing about being stuck in 1969. 

* * *

Donna leaned back against the lounge chair, laughing along with Eva. It was the end of the night, and Eva had invited Donna into the garden for iced tea that she’d made. It was a habit that Wilf had picked up when he was in America, one that Donna knew he still enjoyed. She remembered being a young child of four, sitting in the backyard with the fairy lights with her Gramps and their cups of iced tea. Sylvia was inside the house, presumably telling one of her mates about her new encounters with the 'yummy Doctor John.' 

The Doctor and Wilf had disappeared out the house with Wilf’s telescope in the Doctor’s arms giggling like old chums. Wilf said they could maybe see some planet or other tonight, and the Doctor jumped at the chance to look at the stars again. Donna had to remind them both to be careful. The Doctor only gave her his customary wink before letting Wilf lead the way.

“It's nice, seeing Fred get along with someone," Eva commented, draping a blanket over her legs as she exhaled from her cigarette. It was still disconcerting to Donna, the amount that people smoked in the sixties. But her nan looked so classy doing it, looking out into the big, waxy moon. "Ever since the war, he's been obsessed with seeing the stars. Kept him sane all those nights, he said."

"The Doc--John feels the same, I guess," Donna sighed, looking up at the clear sky. She was unable to fight her own twinge of TARDIS-sickness as the stars twinkled down on her. "It feels like we've been everywhere, but there's still so much out there to see. My mum thinks I'm mad, running off with a bloke like him...but I'm happy. Happier than I ever would have been, stuck as a temp."

When Eva said nothing, Donna turned to her landlady/grandmother, afraid she had said too much. But she was surprised to see her grandmother look at her with the softest, kindest eyes. It made Donna ache for something she'd never had. Her Nan would die before Donna was born. Cancer, she had been told when she was little. Complications from stomach cancer as an after effect of her smoking. 

"I can see why John loves you so much, sweetheart," Eva told her, flicking her cigarette aside and blowing out the last puff. "You're absolutely wonderful. Any person around you can see that you just...glow when you're together. Brilliant, I believe he keeps saying. I wonder why you don't seem to see it in yourself."

Donna was about to say something when they heard the backyard gates creak open. Wilf and the Doctor were singing Bohemian Rhapsody without a care in the world. Obviously, the Doctor didn't much that they were singing it about twenty years ahead of its time. Both men were in a good mood, chittering with each other as they made their way to the women.

“We’ve found it, Eva! The perfect spot,” Wilf exclaimed, exploding into the backyard like the world outside was on fire. Behind him, looking equally excited was the Doctor, his hands in his pockets as he regarded Donna with a grin. "There's a hill up on the allotment, even without the old scope you can see the stars. You could probably see Jupiter  up there!"

"Granted, you would probably need a much bigger telescope," the Doctor chimed in, equally happy.

 Apparently he had been the one to choose Wilf's future haunt, which only steeled Donna's resolve in following through with her plans. If the Doctor was allowed to sing Queen before they had a hit and show Wilf the allotment, she sure as hell would be allowed to play matchmaker for her parents while she waited on him to pull the rabbit out of the hat and get them out of 1969. 

"Oh, that's wonderful, Fred," Eva said, squeezing her husband's hand as he whistled and danced around. "He has been looking for a spot for quite some time now," she explained to Donna. "He promised to show me Jupiter." 

"And I will, love, I promise you that," Wilf said, kissing the top of Eva's head as the Doctor squeezed Donna's shoulder. 

* * *

 

She couldn't help the tears that sprung into her eyes later that evening, hastily wiping them away before the Doctor noticed. They were back in the Drumlins, going through the motions of getting ready for bed. Donna didn't question why the Doctor even bothered, as he only ever needed a couple of hours of sleep. But there he was, buttoning up pajamas as she emerged from the bathroom. He heard her sniffling plainly, but Donna's face was defiant, even if the tip of her nose matched her hair.

"You were crying," he said as a matter of fact, studying her from his standing position in front of the bed. She's persuaded him to put on the striped pajamas from the clothesbin. The sleeves were too short and it looked like he was wearing cropped pants, but he was comfortable. Donna smiled at him, trying to hide her feelings. 

"I was not," she said, shrugging off her dressing gown and sitting on what she now felt was her side of the bed. 

But the instinctual link she had with the Doctor worked both ways, and he knew she was fibbing. Donna sighed as he sat in front of her on the bed, trying to divine answers where he knew she would eventually tell him. She sighed, giving up. Donna crossed her legs under the sheets as the doctor turned his body completely to hers. 

"I just didn't know," she told him, rubbing her thumb idly over the top of his hand, tracing circles and patterns that meant nothing to her and everything to him. "Nan died before I was born. I couldn't help but wonder what it would have been like if I had her _and_ Gramps growing up, you know? Probably would have spoiled me rotten, get away with half the stuff Mum tells me off for," she laughed. 

"Oh what a world that would be," the Doctor mused, making Donna chuckle.

"She said that I glow when I'm with you," she told the Doctor. "Is that true?"

She looked into his eyes. They were so old, so vast, like a whole universe in itself. Time spun and whirled in those old eyes of his, the weight and sadness of them always took her breath away. Donna sometimes wondered how she could look straight into those eyes and not drown in their wisdom and brilliance, in their sadness. The Doctor eyes crinkled, the soft halogen lighting making them sparkle with mischief. 

"Oh, Donna Noble," he said, taking the hand that was playing with his. "Do you really have to ask?"

Then he kissed her, pulling at her hand so she could come closer to him. It was warm and pleasant, and it fought away her salty tears, banishing thoughts of that could have been. He pulled her closer, wanting to lose himself in her warmth and heat, to chase away her insecurities. He wanted to shout along with her at the world. He wanted her to know that he was listening. 

"I do have to ask when you don't give me a bloody answer, Time Boy," Donna laughed as he kissed the corners of her lips and the bridge of her red nose. He decided not to answer her again, this time moving his kisses down her jawline and right at the pulse point on her neck. 

Donna's other hand, that clever hand that he's forgotten was there, slid up his thigh. It was slow, determined and, like Donna, wasn't one for subtlety. The Doctor retracted his body a bit, searching her face. She felt his worry niggle at the back of her mind.

"Donna, are you--?"

She decided not to answer him, choosing instead to kiss him again.


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor, as it turned out, was a snuggler in his sleep. A cross between a limpet and an octopus he was, all skinny arms and legs as he tried to grab as much of Donna as possible. In the course of the night she could hear him snuffle nonsensical words into her ginger hair, his leg clamped firmly over hers. He had been sleeping for as long as she had, and Donna briefly wondered if time travel without the TARDIS took more out of him than she realized. 

But as he continued to press his body against hers, chasing her warmth while she pressed her cheek into his neck, Donna was struck by the realization that she'd just _shagged an alien_. Mind you it was a good shag, a fantastic shag if she was being completely honest. It was just something that they both said would never happen. Now that it had, Donna didn't mind eating her own words. Being stuck in 1969 and trapped in the arms of her best friend (now lover) wasn't so bad.  

She turned her body so she was now facing him, his slow and even breath passing over her face. He'd claimed hours ago that his superior Time Lord physiology gave him unthinkable stamina. While that had been true for the five near consecutive times they'd done it, the Doctor was out like a light by the time Donna tried to go for a sixth. She smiled and brushed his hair away from his face as the dawning sunlight began to stream into their room. She wished she would never forget this moment, when she truly and honestly felt like he was hers. Donna never had a boyfr--lover who burrowed his chin into her neck as insistently as the Doctor did, and she realized that she actually liked it.

That was, until she realized she had to pee. 

"Doctor," she said, trying to shuffle out of his grasp as he ran his hand up and down her side, wiggling his cold toes as he continued to spoon her. 

"Sssh. Checking for paper cuts is a very serious process," he told her, his hand drifting to her neck, her throat, her--well, hello there. "Want to make sure you didn't get hurt with all that vigorous shagging we did."

"I would hardly call it vigorous," she snorted, burrowing closer as his right arm slid under her. Donna convinced herself she had shuddered in the cold, and not at the too light stroke of the Doctor's hand as it roamed up her body. "I actually have to make breakfast, Spaceman. And go to work." 

_And use the loo_ , she thought, but he didn't have to know that. 

He snuffled air out of his mouth in a huff, dismissing Donna's words as ridiculous. He kissed the side of her temple, still with closed eyes. She'd never seen him so relaxed and satisfied, she realized, as he did now. His eyes slowly opened, bleary and bright. Time seemed to slow around them in this moment. But then stars were born in moments like these. 

"I told you I have Spanish doubloons in my pocket," he pointed out, throwing the sheets over her head so she was trapped underneath them and around him. He knew how to be persistent, she could give him that. But Donna wasn't going to get anywhere with her plans if the Doctor continued to be such an extraterrestrial twat

"Yes, but they don't give you change for that at Sainsbury's," Donna chided, kicking him off of her (quite spectacularly, he noted) so she could get out of bed and finally use the bathroom. 

"Ha," she said triumphantly, grinning at the closed door. She was just washing her face when she heard the Doctor's footfalls by the door

"Don-naaaa," the Doctor whined urgently. "I'll make tea!"

"Hang on, be down in a mo'!" Donna yelled through the door. She honestly worried that he might take apart the kettle or the toaster if she wasn't there to watch him. But she knew the Doctor had already scampered downstairs. 

Later, as they sat in the kitchen with warm, buttery toast and perfectly brewed tea, Donna had to concede that the Doctor could probably last a day in the TARDIS by himself. Not a piece of toast was burnt, and he'd procured eggs and a few things out of his pocket to make french toast. 

She missed the look of absolute sadness that crossed his features when she said she was completely confident in his being adept at being alone. They stood at the doorway of their house. The Doctor pulled his coat over Donna, letting her complain when she said she could tie it perfectly herself. 

"I'll get us enough for a proper fry-up soon," she yelled back at him as she walked to the gate. She didn't expect him to walk to her in three long strides, kissing the top of her head.

"I _told_ Wilf you take better care of me," he said in the most gentle, loving tone possible before going back out to the garden. Donna shook her head and walked to the bus station, smoothing down the same dress from yesterday. Until she got a proper pair of pantyhose, anything else was too short for her. She would rather be called shabby than a tart. 

* * *

 A couple of stops on the bus later, she wasn't surprised when Geoff Noble walked in, still in his leather jacket and with such greasy hair she worried for him being near open flame. His surprise was evident when he saw Donna sitting in the bus, looking up at him expectantly.

"Are you a flipping magician or summin?" He asked in disbelief. She noticed he had this way of mixing fifties American expressions into his everyday speech. It was hilarious, and it pained Donna to realize she would never be able to hold it against him when she came back to Earth. Well, her present. Whatever.

"I'm just a benevolent stranger on the bus," she shrugged. Then she remembered something. "And I'm married, so don't get any ideas, bub."

"Hey, hey, 's cool," He said, holding up his hands, slipping next to her on the seat as the red bus lurched towards High Street. "So what's on your mind?"

"I was thinking," Donna began, playing with the wist tie on the Doctor's coat. "You know Sylvie Mott, don't you?"

Geoff scoffed, as much as any man could scoff at any point of his life, sitting there on the bus. "Yea, I know her. Had her in my class in sixth form. Bit stroppy, but good for a laugh. Had a few mates interested in her."

"Were you?" Donna asked, flicking imaginary lint off of the coat, studying his reaction. His pupils had dilated in surprise, and Geoff was just a little breathless. Oh boy. Not only was he interested, he was practically in love with her already. 

"Me? Interested in a chick like her?" He scoffed, running his hands through his hair. He saw Donna look at him incredulously and he relented slightly. 

"Say I was interested, and I'm not saying that I am!" He quickly clarified, facing her. "Sylvia No--Mott is...she's...you know. And I'm....you know," he gestured towards his leather jacket and skinny jeans. Donna didn't really find anything objectionable about it, but given that her mother's type seemed to be intellectual, skinny aliens with two hearts, she got the gist.

"I think unless I manage to be the first man on the moon, she'd never give me the time of day," he groaned. Donna laughed at seeing this side of her father. 

"You'd be surprised at where you could end up," Donna commented, like going to the moon was as common as riding the bus to High Street. Speaking of, they had arrived at their stop. 

"I have to go to work," Donna announced, nudging her head towards the building where the advertising agency was. "I think she could be good for you, Noble. Everyone needs a good strop once in a while. You know, Grand--her father was looking for someone to help out on his newspaper shop. I could put in a good word for you."

 "That would be awesome, thank you," he said, a little too enthusiastically, which he made up for by clearing his throat as Donna smiled and waved, walking to her office.

"Why do you care so much anyway?" He yelled towards her. Donna turned back and gave him an all too knowing look. For a moment, Geoffrey wondered where this girl came from. He wondered why he trusted her and listened to her. 

"Let's just say I have a vested interest in the two of you!" Donna called back. "Buy me some chips later, yeah?"

Geoff watched her walk away, shaking his head as he thought of Sylvia and her bright blonde hair. 

* * *

 

 

Donna came home later with Geoffrey following quietly behind her. For a bloke who wore a leather jacket and smoked like a chimney, he was surprisingly shy and subdued. Donna led him to Wilf's magazine shop a couple of blocks from the bus stop, asking Geoff to wait outside while she talked him up to the boss.

"Donna!" Wilf exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air like Donna had done something spectacularly exciting. He was stacking some newspapers in the back of the cluttered shop, abandoning work quickly at the sight of his tenant. Some things never changed. "You just coming back from work?"

"Yeah," Donna answered, smiling. "Listen, I forgot to thank you and Eva for dinner last night, you have no idea how grateful John and I are for everything you've done for us."

"Oh pish, it's nothing," Wilf scoffed, dismissing Donna's words with a waving gesture as he went behind the counter. "Your John has helped me quite a bit with my celestial outings, he's been quite handy around the house as well. I've never seen our toaster behave quite as well as it does after he took it apart and put it back together!"

Donna held the urge to roll her eyes. Trust the Doctor to drop in on the neighbors and take apart their toasters. 

"Of course Eva thinks of you like a daughter," he said, squeezing her hand. "She's hoping you become a good influence on our Sylvia. I have to admit, I have to admire the way you decided to go to work, dear."

Normally it wouldn't be a big deal to make a statement like that, but she knew that Wilf just held back from asking why it was her going out on the daily grind, and not the Doctor. Donna chose not to comment on it, instead, smiling at Wilf.

"Well, I actually came here with something for you," she said, rubbing her hands together excitedly. "I know you were saying you needed an extra hand around here so, I brought in a friend. Geoff?" She said, looking out the door where Geoff peeked in with a shy smile, meekly crossing the threshold.

"Why Geoffrey Noble!" Wilf exclaimed, immediately leaving the counter again to shake the young man's hand. "Looking to woo Sylvie again, are we?"

"Certainly hoping to, sir," Geoff said, smiling shyly.

When she was younger, Donna saw her father's pictures when he was still in secondary school. He was a big ol' nerd then, in the crisp polo shorts and the glasses. Donna was always told he'd switched to the whole James Dean look when he started saving up for a motorbike. She also remembered he would earn most of that in Wilf's shop. 

 Wilf was about to say more when the shop door opened and in burst Sylvia, smacking gum and looking her usual shade of stroppy. Her eyes swept the shop quickly, from her father to Donna to the boy standing in the shop with his hands in his pockets.

"Oh, uh. Hullo," she said, a tad more polite when she saw him. "Dad, who's he?" 

"Sweetheart, it's Geoffrey!" Wilf exclaimed, squeezing his new shop boy's shoulders as he urged her towards his daughter. "You remember him from sixth form, don't you? He helped you with your French modules."

"Ah _oui,_ " Sylvia smiled, holding her palms behind her to push up her cleavage. It was a clever trick that Donna found herself using before. "You look...different. Are you working in the shop now?"

"I guess so," He shrugged, eyeing Donna from the corner of her eye. She looked like the cat that got the cream. "Donna recommended me for the post."

"Oh did she?" Sylvia then turned to her with an icy, appraising look. Obviously she was noting the fact that Donna was still wearing the Doctor's coat and still wearing the same dress form yesterday. Even in bloody 1969 her mother knew how to make Donna squirm. 

"I just saw your _husband_ , Mrs. Smith," she said, and Donna had no idea what that was supposed to mean. "He said to meet him at the conservatory as soon as you get back."

She knew a brush off when she saw it, and figured it was time to go back into the house. Giving Geoff a wink and Wilf a wave, Donna walked back to the Drumlins, her chest warm at a job well done. It was cute, seeing the start of her parents love story. Sylvia and Geoff would become close friends as he worked in the shop. Eventually she would start looking for excuses to hang around, not that he would mind. Then after about a year she would wring her hair out and ask _him_ to marry her. Good to know Donna and her mother had something in common. 

Donna was still smiling when she reached the house, hearing noise and a flurry of activity coming from their conservatory. 

"Alright alien boy, what's so important that I had to--oh," she said, cutting herself off as she looked at the expanse of their empty conservatory wall. It was like seeing something off of a crime drama. The wall was tacked up with the photographs and files from the purple folder. She recognized the Doctor's rushed, frenzied handwriting on the files with words like 'exploding chicken??' 'Sally Sparrow' and 'ontological paradox.' There were a lot of question marks, a diagram of a circle, and a lot of string.

"Donna Noble, I present, the wall that will get us out of 1969 and trap the Angels," he said proudly, looking at her beaming like a little kid that just showed his mummy his horrible hand-painting from school. "Apparently there's this woman in the present, well, future or my past, called Sally Sparrow. I met her once when Martha and I handled this…thing. One thing. Well. Four things. Four things--"

"And a lizard, you already told me this part," she interrupted, taking off his coat and walking closer to the mad collage on the wall. "What's this bit about the chicken?"

"The device," the Doctor said quickly as he paced the room like a mad professor. He had, on the floor (although Donna had no idea where he'd scrounged those up), a can of black paint and a paintbrush. "The thing that went ding when there was stuff. I found out today that it also boils an egg at ten paces. Not too good when the chickens are still on top."

"Ouch," Donna said, wincing as she came closer to the wall, studying the trail of clues Sally Sparrow had left for them. 

Apparently they were supposed to paint on the wall of the conservatory, find a woman who was brought to Hull in 1920 and convince her to write a letter, arrange for the TARDIS to have a DVD override, orchestrate the career of a certain Billy Shipton and record a DVD easter egg before the DVD was invented. Donna read through the transcript. Apparently she and the Doctor did (or would do) a lot of shouting, hardly letting poor Sally get a word in edgewise. 

"Doctor, how are we going to get all of this done?" Donna asked in slight exasperation. The wall loomed over her, numbering their days in Wester Drumlins.

"Leave that to me," the Doctor said firmly, walking over to join her by the wall. He was determined to let her enjoy the domesticity of it all while he tried to piece together a plan that was feeble, at best. 

He had no idea how to put the DVD protocol into the TARDIS from another time. He had no idea how he was even going to find Billy Shipton, much less create the DVD. He certainly didn't know if the plan Sally described would actually work. As a time traveller he knew that timelines changed and broke all the time, and strangely enough, there was nothing in Sally's plans that seemed fixed. 

But best not to let Donna worry. She seemed to enjoy spending time with her Nan, she deserved that. 

"We're in this together, remember?" Donna reminded him, nudging him with her shoulder. "Who's going to keep your head on straight when you run around doing these things, dumbo?" She laughs, as he recognized what she was saying with a small smile. 

"Oh I dunno," the Doctor shrugged. "I can think of a few people."

She slapped his arm for that, and the Doctor had to smile. Then Donna's face turned pensive again as she studied the wall, frowning deeply. They both continued to do this throughout the evening, voicing thoughts and making comments about the plan, which consisted mainly of Donna asking the Doctor impossible, unlikely questions, about the Angels coming to Chiswick (Nah, they don't usually go to times where they've dumped their victims) or the house collapsing on them (it's still new) or his future regeneration coming to get them out (Not without causing a massive paradox, and we don't want that). 

Donna managed to scrounge up sandwiches for tea, and they both sat in front of the wall. It was like a comfortable, casual date, if you counted talking about a life saving plan a date. 

The Doctor had just come back with the blanket in his arms and two pillows (having a sleepover, Spaceman?). He whipped out his sonic screwdriver to get the fire in the fireplace going when Donna asked perhaps the most important question of all.

"What's an ontological paradox?" 

The Doctor jumped up in delight as the fire roared, joining Donna by the floor. She had a mug of tea to split between them and they were actually cuddling in front of a fireplace. It would have been romantic if it wasn't so bloody cold. 

"You are just full of questions tonight, aren't you?" the Doctor asked fondly, smiling as he placed an arm around her shoulders. He loudly smacked his lips against the top of her ginger hair. "I love questions, bring them on, _molto bene!"_

"I _said_ ," Donna said with a sigh. "What's an ontological paradox."

The Doctor didn't even have to blink, spitting out the answer as fast as he did. 

"It's a paradox resulting from time travel, where the items or information are passed from the future to the past, which in turn become the same items or information that are subsequently passed from the past to the future - this creates a circularity of cause-effect such that the items or information have no discernible origin." He said it so quickly and so self assuredly that Donna swat him lightly on the arm. 

"I didn't ask for the Britannica edition, Professor Martian."

The Doctor chuckled. Add that to the growing list of nicknames Donna was forever coming up with. He took a deep breath he didn't really need and began the Cliffsnotes version of his explanation.

"It's a residue of time travel," he began, slower and much more gentle this time, watching her expression to catch any confusion and belay any interruption. Donna's brows were knotted, but she was listening and absorbing. He loved it when his companions had that look of utter concentration on their faces. "In the regular flow of time, gadgets and information get passed from the past to the present, but when you're a time traveler, like you and me, it's occasionally the other way round, making it impossible to tell who created the information in the first place, or if it was made at all."

"Like the device," Donna said thoughtfully. "And that DVD you've stellotaped to the wall."

"Yep," the Doctor confirmed, popping the 'p' like she'd asked something about the weather. "This whole plan is actually a paradox. That DVD should contain a recording of a conversation you and I haven't had or may never really have. Brilliant, isn't it?"

"It's confusing," Donna frowned, shrugging closer to him as the fire started to warm her toes. 

"Will it work, though?" 

"It's all in the timelines!" The Doctor exclaimed a little too enthusiastically, a blanket statement that could maybe end her line of questions. "I don't suppose you recall a couple living in Wester Drumlins when you were younger, do you?"

"No, but that could still change, couldn't it?" She asked, looking up at the wall again. The Doctor, all arms and legs that stretched on to forever, covered every corner of Donna's body with the blanket draped over them both, reminding her of their state of undress and pleasantry that morning. It was all so nice and domestic, it made her want to cry. 

She thought she'd given up all of this when she chose to see the stars with her Spaceman. Never in her mad dreams did she think that she would itch for the warmth of a fire, love the feeling of his arms around her, or rest her body against his. She felt unworthy. "If it isn't fixed and all, we could still be stuck here...forever."

"Yeah," the Doctor said simply, bowing his head against her neck in defeat. "We could."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has a bit more plot in in. Just a disclaimer, I haven't seen the Angels Take Manhattan, or any Weeping Angel story after the one where it gets in Amy Pond's eye (which, what?). Let's just say that I have a lot of Moffat related problems. The fact alone that everyone keeps saying that time can be changed is already a bit problematic. 
> 
> But ANYWAY.


	8. Chapter 8

After that night in front of the fire, Donna slowly noticed that she and the Doctor were developing a routine. They would wake up tangled in between their bedsheets, spending the first few minutes of the day whispering to each other and giggling like naughty schoolchildren. He would start talking about things he wanted to do, the planets he wanted to explore with her, when they got the TARDIS back. Then they would go downstairs for breakfast, where the Doctor would make tea and Donna would make toast, eggs and bacon now that they could afford it. All the while, the Doctor would make a running commentary about breakfast on other planets and countries he'd been to, while Donna tried to ignore the strain in his voice whenever he thought about the TARDIS. 

Then he would walk her to the bus stop, still talking. She still wore his coat, even if they could afford to buy one for her. Despite the lowering autumn temperature, the Doctor didn't seem to mind one bit. He would tell her what he was working on that day (like today in particular, he was going to try and track down Katherine Costello nee Nightingale from Hull)  and she would remind him to take care of himself. They would kiss, just because it felt like the right thing to do, and he would squeeze her hand a little longer than he should before she stepped into the bus.

Geoffrey always sat next to Donna on the bus now. She knew her father loved talking about books and films, especially James Bond ones. He was a huge fan of 007, Sean Connery was his favorite. Donna wondered what he would have made of Daniel Craig. Whenever she asked him about his blossoming relationship with Sylvia, Donna swears he blushed. He would puff out his cigarette as he tried to keep his cool, but managed to gush a bit before Donna laughed at him.

At work, Donna would suffer her boss' extremely sexual and inappropriate behavior. While she knew that sexual harassment was commonplace in the sixties, she couldn't help but unleash a mighty telling off whenever he tried anything untoward. Which of course, her boss found even more attractive. Bloody typical.

Her favorite part of the day was always coming home. She and Geoff would walk to the magazine shop where Sylvia would already be waiting for him. Donna noticed a quick and profound change in her mother since Geoff started working in the shop. She stopped flirting with the Doctor (she actually started getting stroppy with him, and that would apparently never change now) and even helped out sometimes when Wilf wanted to help Eva make dinner or when he and the Doctor holed themselves up in the garage to tinker with the telescope. Donna would say a quick hello to Eva, sometimes they would walk up to the house together. 

Being the caretaker of the Drumlins, Eva put it upon herself to search charity shops and discount stores to get a few items to make the house more comfortable. The Queen Anne desk, which Donna remembered seeing the first time she walked into the bedroom, was Eva's favorite find so far. That, and the massive rug she procured for the conservatory, now Donna's favorite room. 

Then she would go to the house where the Doctor would be waiting for her, bouncing like a little boy on sugar when he saw her. He would tell her about the day's progress and mention a dinner invitation from Wilf. Then Donna would smile and listen, crossing off the next thing on their 'get out of here' checklist (she was nothing if not organized) before they went to bed to do it all over again.

So Donna wasn't at all surprised when the routine was broken two weeks later, after the Doctor met with Kathy Nightingale and showed her the first page of the letter to Sally. 

It was a Saturday, and Donna and the Doctor were having a nice sit in the garden, bundled up in coats and blanket with tea. The Thing, as Donna had named the Doctor's device, was placed in the middle of their tidy lawn, as it had for the last three days. The next thing on their list was to track down Billy Shipton's arrival. If The Thing went ding, then they could track him down and help him settle into his life in 1969 like some kind of welcome party. The Doctor had sat out in the garden with the device for the last three days, and there wasn't even so much as an egg explosion at the time. 

But it was the weekend, and they didn't really have enough money to go out, so Donna didn't mind sitting in a freezing garden with the Thing. The Doctor was trying to entertain her with the story of how he and Martha met on the moon with the plasmavore and the Judoon.

"Hang on. Did you just say you kissed her?" Donna asked, raising an eyebrows at him. The Doctor smiled that smile of his, the extraterrestrial twat was so pleased with himself, raising both his eyebrows up and down at her.

"Genetic transfer Donna, but yes, it was a kiss. I told you this regeneration is quite attractive," he said, "I seem to recall you saying something along those lines last night when.."

"What I say in the bedroom cannot be held against me!" Donna exclaimed. 

"Plus, I always somehow end up kissing my companions," the Doctor shrugged nonchalantly, turning to The Thing again. "Was only natural, really."

"Oh _do_ tell all, Spaceman," Donna said sarcastically, rolling her eyes.  She knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn't help the stab of jealousy and insecurity in her. Lord knows they hadn't been together long enough for him to tell her every detail of his ten lives, but right now, she felt the weight of his history fighting her. Did he really kiss them all? Did he shag any of them? Did he take them all to Disney World and tell them he loved them?

The Doctor was about to say something when The Thing actually went ding. It also lit up and whirred, which was new. Plus it started to ring, which was also new. 

"Atron energy," the Doctor exclaimed, scrambling to his feet towards the device dinging in the grass. He also picked up the phone and put it to his ear like he was fully expecting someone to answer on the other end. “Rippling across the time streams without a boat and, bam! Billy Shipton, here we come!"

Then without a look behind him, the Doctor ran out of the garden and put of the house with the device guiding his movements. Donna sighed and shed the blanket around her shoulders, wrapping the Doctor's coat closer to herself as she ran after him, running away from her earlier thoughts as well. Now wasn't the time to compete with the ghosts of his past, but it didn't stop her from feeling just a bit insecure.

Not that the Doctor needed to know that.

* * *

They found Billy Shipton huddled behind some alley at the end of the street, wet and very confused. Donna actually felt quite sorry for him. God only knows how confused she had been at her first extraterrestrial adventure, and now she was lucky enough to be traveling with a Time Lord who more often than not usually found a way to deal with these things. That and of course, she actually _knew_ aliens were real. 

Needless to say there had been a lot for Billy Shipton to wrap his head around. The Doctor, however, was insistent on pushing his agenda, huddling next to Billy on the ground in his still immaculate blue suit (Donna wondered if he spent a part of his day washing and pressing it just to look like he never changed clothes) and the phone back in the device cradle. He quickly gave him the gist of what happened, a version Donna had never heard before. 

"Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels. The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had. All your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy."

"Tracked you down with this," the Doctor continued, holding up his device. "This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff."

"We called that The Thing, and it goes ding even when there's no stuff, but it rings when there's atron energy," Donna corrected, wanting to contribute something to the conversation. But the Doctor continued on talking. 

"Also, it can boil an egg at thirty paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow." 

Donna's massive eye roll kind of cancelled out everything the Doctor was saying. 

"But good news, you're going to get to see the moon landings! Isn't that brilliant? You're gonna love the seventies, really. Eighties not so much." 

Donna sighed and shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest when Billy didn't seem to think that was brilliant at all.

"He's scared, Doctor," she explained, shoving her foot between the Doctor and Billy to kneel beside their guest. "Budge up, I'll talk to him."

"I'm still here, you know," Billy said, shaking his head. "This can't be 1969, and there is no such thing as time travel." 

"Billy, the thing that touched you," Donna said in a gentle, soothing voice. "It touched us too, brought us here. That was real, mate. It brought you here, in this time, for a reason. I know I'm not supposed to say this," she said, glancing briefly at the Doctor, who watched her carefully. "But I promise, it's going to get better. You're going to see Sally again."

The former detective shook his head, not too sure if he should trust a couple of strangers who accosted him in an alleyway after he'd been...attacked? Had he been attacked? 

"You will," Donna pressed, squeezing his arm reassuringly. "And when you do, tell her about the Doctor, the daft alien who talked about Angels and time travel. Tell her how you live your life from this moment onwards."

"And tell her to look at the list of DVDs," the Doctor piped in. 

"Right," Donna said. "That too."

Billy's eyes darted between the Doctor and Donna, still unsure if he should trust them. He looked at The Timey Wimey Detector, quiet now that the Atron energy had dissipated. Billy turned to Donna, who looked at him with so much concern that he actually wanted to trust her. She squeezed his arm reassuringly and smiled. Billy could never resist a beautiful girl with an equally beautiful smile, so he smiled back at her. 

"Thank you, gorgeous girl." He said to Donna. "You're stuck here like me eh?" 

Donna and Billy shared a look but the Doctor decided he would have none of that. 

"Not stuck Billy, just...misplaced our motor, that's all," he declared, standing up and scrambling for something the inside of his jacket pocket. The DVD. "For you," he said emphatically. "You'll know what to do with it when the time comes. But until then..."  


"Welcome to 1969," Donna said sadly. 

* * *

Billy had decided not to come home with Donna and the Doctor (his face blanched a little when he found out where they were currently taking residence), choosing instead to get his new life started right away, somewhere neither of them knew. He did, however, give Donna a kiss on the cheek, which actually made the Doctor twitch involuntarily. 

They held hands on the way back, oddly quiet after what just happened. There was only one thing on their minds, and it hung in the air like an unspoken question. Donna never liked unspoken questions, though. Neither did the Doctor, really, but it just seemed easier to have her do it first. 

"What happens now, Doctor?" She asked softly, letting him swing her hand forwards and backwards as they walked. 

"Now we wait for the TARDIS to come back," he said simply, his lip stretched thin in thought as he considered something in his mind. Something that Donna immediately picked up on. 

"And if it doesn't?" She asked him. The Doctor's face turned dark for a moment, covering his face in the shadows as they walked slowly along the street. He lifted his face up at her, with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. 

"Then it's just you and me, Mrs. Smith," he chuckled, looking down at his toes again. “Donna and the Doctor in 1969. It's like a sitcom title, isn't it? Not really my thing, sitcoms. Now cartoons, I really like. We could get a telly to watch the moon landing! I’ve never seen it on the telly before. In person Martha really loved it, I’m sure you will too.  Though the Earth moon is nothing compared to the Dancing Moons of Poosh.”

Donna sighed and shook her head. “You don’t have to pretend that it’s okay with you, Doctor,” she said in a voice so subdued the Doctor doubted that it was her. “I’m your best friend. I know that you don’t exactly relish the thought of staying still anywhere for a period of time. Sometimes even being in the TARDIS makes you stir crazy.”

The Doctor opened his mouth to say something in retort, but Donna knew better and held up a hand to stop him. 

“Don’t worry,” she said, pulling his hand back so they were looking at each other in the street. A passerby would have thought they were secret lovers on some kind of tryst, bathed in the moonlight like that. “I gave up all of this a long time ago,” she said, indicating the house, the life they made, her family. The Doctor wasn’t sure he wanted to know what Donna was talking about. “I don’t need all the domestic things. I need those stars, Doctor. So we’re going to get the TARDIS back at any cost. At _any_ cost.”

That night, as they lay together in bed, the Doctor wordlessly wrapped his arms around Donna, burying his head in her bright red hair and pulling her so close to him that she thought she would break in two. She wondered what he was thinking, he was doing everything he could not to let her know the thoughts running through his mind. 

But still, he said nothing. 

* * *

The following morning, the Doctor got out of bed as soon as the sun broke through the cracks of darkness in the sky. Pulling the covers up to Donna’s chin the way he liked, he snuck out of the bedroom to go for a bit of a walk. Once the hour was more appropriate and the cold not so biting, he dropped by the Mott’s house to visit Eva, discussing something with her. Then he walked down to the magazine shop where he and Wilf were supposed to meet. 

“Wilf! Come on out chum, those focus lenses aren’t going to fix themselves!” The Doctor exclaimed, bounding into Wilf’s magazine shop like he’d been playing a round of Hide and Go Seek with him. 

Unfortunately, the shop was devoid of his friend’s usual presence. In his stead was a boy no older than twenty three, with an apron over his white shirt and skinny jeans. His hair, slicked back in an elephant’s trunk with a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He was also using his broom as a mic stand while he sang along to the radio. 

“Er…I’m guessing Wilf’s not in?” The Doctor asked, quirking an eyebrow at the shop boy, who smiled politely (apparently he was nonplussed about being caught dancing) and shook his head to confirm that Wilf wasn’t around. That didn’t stop the Doctor from continuing to talk, though.  “Hello, I’m the Doctor..err..John. John Smith. My…wife…Donna and I live up in Wester Drumlins. Well, it’s more like we live in a room in Wester Drumlins. Two rooms. Three if you count the bathroom. You are?”  


The Doctor had taken Geoffrey’s hand without hesitation, shaking it vigorously like he was determined to shake it until the hand dropped off. Geoff took it in stride, though, cool guy that he was. 

“Geoff Noble,” he said, putting his hands back on the broom. “I know your wife Donna, she recommended me to the post.”  


“Brilliant! She what?” The Doctor asked, taken aback so quickly that Geoff actually balked a bit. 

“She recommended me for the job here,” he said, sweeping a bit of the floor to demonstrate. “Brilliant bird you’ve got sire, if I do say so myself. I don’t think Sylvie would have ever given me the time of day if I hadn’t come to work here.”  


The Doctor suddenly looked very worried, his eyebrows furrowing together. “It was nice to meet you Geoffrey Noble,” he said quickly, turning around and exiting the shop. Geoff watched the strange man storm out of the shop and tried to picture a guy like him with a girl like Donna. 

“Not good enough for her,” he concluded, shaking his head to resume his sweeping up. 

* * *

Donna was at work again, stretching out her muscles from sitting behind a desk for two long. She felt like her muscles were going into some kind of atrophy, she was so used to running around that sitting all day made her feel more achy and sore. That and the late night they spent looking for Billy Shipton left her knackered. 

“Smith!” Her boss suddenly said, his hands on her shoulders making Donna jump up in alert. “Nice job on typing up those survey results for the Cooper account. The client found the results…very satisfactory.”

If this was any other bloke in any other century Donna would have blown a gasket then and there by threatening to lob off this guy’s hand with the nearest cleaver. But as it was, she was sure the tables would turn on her if she flipped out at her boss, it being the very backwards sixties and all. Sexual harassment was still unheard of, much to the advantage of the pigs in high office. 

She was just about to stand and politely excuse herself when a figure appeared in her peripheral vision. Donna could just about recognise who it was when it started prattling. 

“Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, his voice dark and low, making the entire office pause and turn to the stranger standing by Donna’s cubicle. She almost groaned. But there he was, the Doctor, her Spaceman commanding the attention of the entire room. There was something dangerous in his eyes (she had only seen it used once, on the Queen of the Racnoss) that terrified Donna, and lured in everyone else in the room. Even her boss was taken aback. 

“You see, Donna here, is only working in this company to support me,” the Doctor said, stepping closer with his hands in his pockets. He would have looked so casual if he didn’t have that _look_ on his face. “I told her I had a gold deposit in my jacket, but she insisted. Because that’s the kind of person she is. She would rather do something she didn’t want to do if it meant doing something good for someone else, like me.”  


Her boss looked properly scared now, but his hands were still on Donna. She actually felt him squeeze a bit, in a kind of defiance. Something flashed in the Doctor’s eyes, and she knew that he knew what her boss had just done. 

“Right, let's try another tactic then," he said, rocking forward on the balls of his feet (if only to make him seem even taller) then at his heels. His blasé body movements seemed to make him more terrifying and threatening. Donna could swear she heard someone gulp. "I'll say this once. Let go of my wife." 

* * *

Donna and the Doctor walked back to the house together, with Donna in an infuriated mood. If everyone in the office had been scared of the Oncoming Storm, he was nothing compared to the rage of Donna Noble. 

"That was my boss, you fuckwit, you threatened my _boss_!" She yelled at him as hey walked, the Doctor frowning like he was trying not to let Donna's words get to him. Passers by on the street watched the couple curiously, keeping out of their way. They knew a public row when they saw one. "What are we going to do for money then eh, Space boy?" 

"Space boy?" The Doctor echoed, like she hadn't just called him a fuckwit one sentence before. "That's what you're calling me now? He had his _hands_ on you Donna! What was I supposed to do?"

"I was going to handle it myself, thank you!" Donna shouted at him. "I didn't ask you to unleash whatever terrifying face that was!"

"You certainly don't need _my_ advice to handle things," the Doctor muttered.

"What was that?"

"I said you certainly don't need my advice to handle things!" The Doctor yelled back as they slipped into the wrought iron gate of the house, yelling and arguing as they walked up. "I just talked to your father in Wilf's shop and he told me what you did. Don't you understand what you just did, Donna?"

"What are you talking about, I just gave him a nudge, that's all!"

"No," the Doctor said, his voice going deep suddenly. They had stopped, and now they were facing off on in the middle of their walkup, Donna slightly breathless in her anger and the Doctor giving her that _look_ again. "What you did was to ensure your own creation. I _told_ you that the ontological paradoxes are fragile, Donna. Now after what you did, I wouldn't be surprised if the Angels were coming here now to feed off the potential energy you've just created."

"What the flipping hell are you talking about?" Donna asked. "The Angels, in Chiswick? You were the one who taught Gramps Bohemian Rhapsody, and showed him the hill!"

"I did those things knowing it wouldn't cause trouble," he retorted, glaring at her. "Time Lord, remember?"

"Oh let's all bow down to the superior Time Lord, then!" Donna shouted, crossing her arms as the Doctor started to march into the house. She knew her pride was never going to let her apologize for the catastrophic mess she might have created, and the Doctor was never going to apologize for being right. By god if she wasn't determined to shout at him all night if she had to. 

"Come back here and finish the conversation Space--oh," Donna exclaimed, all the fight running out of her when she saw Wilf standing in the conservatory, his arms crossed as the Doctor stood in the doorway, just as surprised as Donna. He had that look on her face like he was absolutely disappointed, and Donna wasn't surprised. 

"Wilf, how...did we know you were coming in?" Donna asked, trying to be nonchalant. Trust the Doctor to forget telling her that her Gramps was going to be in the house before letting her get into a whole row with him. 

"No, no I was just leaving," He said, waving them off with a hand and shuffling towards the door. "I'd like a word with his highness over here for a bit, if you don't mind, Donna." he cocked his head towards the Doctor.

"No, not at all," Donna said with a sigh, throwing off the Doctor's coat like it was diseased. "I'll just be here with the telly." 

Wilf nodded wordlessly and nudged his head at the Doctor, who dutifully followed his friend back out to the garden. Donna flopped onto the couch after flipping the television set on, turning the dials until she got something in grainy black and white. The new, probably, based on the sound. She was just about to go to the kitchen to make tea when she realized something.

They didn't have a telly before. She was sure they didn't have a proper couch before either. Where did all of this stuff come from?

"Today's the moon landing," the Doctor's voice said as he came up into the doorway. "I borrowed the Motts' television and couch so we could watch."

Donna felt her head drop, from fatigue or embarrassment, she didn't know. She heard the Doctor's plimsolls squeak slightly against the floorboards as he made his way to her, sitting next to her on the couch. This time she was the one who wrapped herself in his skinny limbs. 

"I'm sorry I caused all this trouble," she mumbled over the newscast. "We'll find a way to fix this, won't we?"

This time the Doctor's lips curled into that reassuring if slightly cocky smile. It was a smile that always told her that everything was going to be okay. 

"Of course it will," he said. Then they both watched as humans first made contact with the moon. No need to mention that four versions of Doctor and Martha (and one of the Doctor and Donna, but they didn't know that) were also out there somewhere. 

They talked about the TARDIS, the rooms they missed (the kitchen, especially with its infinitely better tea left a hole in their hearts), the planets the Doctor would take her to when they managed to get it back. Donna talked extensively about her memories as a child, trying to see if anything had changed. The Doctor listened to them all, falling asleep at the sound of her voice. When she was all talked out (finally! the Doctor would have said had he been awake), she kept her eyes on the black and white television as well, daring to imagine a life in this house with the Doctor. She knew they were only dreams, though. 

* * *

They both fell asleep in the conservatory again. There must have been something in the Earth's atmosphere that made the Doctor particularly susceptible to sleeping at night, because he'd been sleeping six hours every night since they got to Chiswick. Not that he minded, of course. He snuffled in his sleep, snoring slightly as Donna burrowed her head into his chest. 

As they slept, the didn't hear giggling and whispering coming from outside. Sylvia and Wilf, just coming back from their first date, had ought that a quick break into the Wester Drumlins was a good way to get the snogging going. Sylvia was especially giggly in her wide leg trousers and recently permed hair, whispering things into Geoff's ear that would have probably gotten her grounded if said out loud.

"Marcie's going to flip when I tell her," Sylvia giggled, pulling Geoff's hand as he led him into the garden. "She always said this was the perfect snog spot."

"Because of the statues?" Geoff asked, practically attacking Sylvia with his mouth, not that she minded of course. Sylvia actually liked a guy who knew what he wanted. 

"No you numpty," She retorted, nuzzling at his neck a little. "Because you can see the stars from here."

"Oh," Geoff said in understanding, not even casting the sky a glance as he focused on his kissing. When they were out of breath, he pulled back and turned to Sylvia with the gorgeous blonde hair and the stars twinkling in her blue eyes. He wouldn't mind looking at that for the rest of his life. 

Suddenly, her look of utter satisfaction twisted into horror as she screamed and pointed at something behind Geoff. He turned to look behind him, utterly confused when he found himself face to face with a statue of an Angel, it's arms raised with sharp talons, its teeth bared and eyes squarely on Geoff.  He could have sworn that wasn't there a minute ago. 

"What the--"

Sylvia screamed again as she turned. Another statue, more terrifying than the other, had appeared in front of her, freezing her to the spot with fear. Geoff was about to turn to her when he heard Donna, still in her work clothes, yelling at them from inside the house, running towards them with her husband (Doctor was it?) in tow. 

"Geoff! Get Sylvia inside, and don't leave until we tell you!" Donna yelled urgently, quickly coming up to take Geoff's spot on the bench. 

The Doctor had something making loud noises from inside his suit jacket as he coaxed Sylvia backwards, urging her to go back inside. She couldn't help but throw her arms around the skinny Doctor and plant a massive kiss on his lips, making him stumble before letting her go.

Geoff turned to Donna, who seemed focused on staring down the statue that wanted to wring his neck. He knew she would have found that kiss utterly hilarious, (he did a little bit) but her face showed nothing but steely determination. None of this made sense. Why were they all so afraid of statues? Why was he? 

"Donna," Geoff said softly, and the redhead simply shook her head. 

"I'll talk to you later. Go."

Then he ran into the house, taking Sylvia's hand without looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea that the Moons of Poosh can dance came from MimingDonna. 
> 
> I told myself that this would be the second to the last chapter, but then again I did think that Chapter 7 was going to be the last. Funny how stories sometimes run away from you.


	9. Chapter 9

Donna had been sleeping for about thirty minutes when she felt the Doctor shift underneath her on the couch. Without opening her eyes, she wrapped her arms around his skinny ones to keep him from moving around, effectively clamping his arms to the side. She never squirmed when he cuddled, so why should he? 

“Your parents are snogging in the garden,” the Doctor complained in lieu of an explanation, pulling the blanket closer to her chin. 

“Let them,” Donna mumbled into his chest. 

“Okay,” the Doctor sighed, falling quiet again as his breathing evened and petered out. Donna was getting used to sleeping with two heartbeats under her ear. It reminded her of the gentle humming of the TARDIS, wherever it was. She tried not to think about the possibility that they may have to stay in Chiswick. She’d been trying all night, really. 

Suddenly, the inside of the Doctor’s suit jacket began to ding, whirr and ding, practically demanding their immediate attention. Donna jumped out of the couch, falling on the floor in surprise as the Doctor immediately sprang up. 

“What’s going on?” Donna asked, jogging after him as he headed to their door. 

“Angels in Chiswick,” he said quickly. “I have to get Sylvia and Geoff out of there. Stay here.”  


There was a part of the Doctor that knew she wasn't going to listen, and he was grateful for that. Donna found her legs pumping up quickly, their muscle memory of her running coming back easily as she outran the Doctor to the gardens. She could see the Angels advancing on the unsuspecting couple, statues coming closer with every blink of her eyes. Her mother was screaming in horror, recoiling in terror at the Angel with its arms outstretched for her. 

"Geoff! Get Sylvia inside, and don't leave until we tell you!” Donna yelled as loud as she could, running to her father as the Doctor gently coaxed Sylvia away from the statues. Donna let her eyes trained on the Angel that tried to take away her father, completely missing the big smack on the lips Sylvia gave the Doctor. 

She felt her father stand close beside her, confused but terrified. 

“Donna,” he said, his voice so small in the face of an unknown enemy. She wanted to tell him that everything was okay, that she was going to fix it. Donna knew that the chances of her seeing him again, as young as he was, became slim from here on out. She wished she could tell him to take care of himself, to stop smoking and to spoil her a little more. More than anything, Donna realised, she desperately wanted a hug from her father. But she didn’t have time for that. 

“I'll talk to you later,” she said, swallowing her tears.  “Go.”

Her breathing relaxed visibly as she spotted her parents running back into the house with held hands. She figured this would be the reason why they would tell her younger self not to come to the Wester Drumlins anymore. Sylvia would have blocked out the real reason why, but her father would always know. 

The Doctor was backing up slowly so he was standing right next to her. He had tossed the Time Wimey Detector Thing into the grass behind the Angels. His chin was jutted out, teeth bared as he assessed the situation. As their gazes flickered, the more statues appeared behind the ones that were already there. 

“What happens when the Angels touch someone already in the past?” Donna asked, feeling wind picking up around them both as the Angels started closing in. Her heart hammered in her chest, and she reached for the Doctor's hand to seek comfort. 

"Let's find out together," The Doctor declared. "Close your eyes."

She did as she was told, closing her eyes as he turned away from the statue in front of him, placing his hands on her cheeks and placed a deep kiss on her lips. Donna kept her eyes closed, but felt the winds beat stronger against her, threatening to pull him away. 

Then she heard the sounds, the wails of the weeping Angels as they tried to grab them, now moving as their eyes closed. The hairs on the back of Donna's head pricked up, feeling them coming too close. She tried to remember if this was what it felt the first time, coming to 1969. 

"Doctor...!!" She tried to scream, her voice was lost to the loud winds that whipped at them. She reached out to touch him, and he was still there. The Doctor held on to her, and she had him like he was her lifeline.

"Keep your eyes shut, Donna! Think about the TARDIS!" 

Then she heard it. That awful, asthmatic wheezing and whirring of a TARDIS trying to land in a middle of all the ontological paradoxes, and Donna's heart fluttered in her chest, her hands on the Doctor's body gripping tighter. He whispered for her not to worry, to keep her eyes closed. 

The Doctor looked up right into the winds, the Angels fighting past them to grab their hands. His fingers fidgeted as he kept his concentration. Time was slowing down around them, he needed time for the TARDIS to rematerialize. They were going home.

"Come on, come on, come onnnnn...yes, brilliant!" 

Then he started to laugh, and the wheezing stopped. 

* * *

They were back inside the TARDIS, like nothing had happened. Donna stumbled for a moment, grabbing on to the railing beside her as he gripped her arms, watching her carefully.

"You okay?" He asked worriedly. "Rematerialization is always a tricky process, we've done it before, obviously, but you had huon particles in you at the time..."

"I'm fine," she said, waving him off easily as she took a breath. Her head was spinning, but as it started to adjust, she looked up at him. He looked much worse than she did, pale and tired. Had he been that drained before they came on board? "What did...what happened?"

"Angels move fast," the Doctor said, scuffling his plimsolls on the grated floor. "I had to give the TARDIS a chance to come to us."

"You slowed time?" Donna asked, slowly standing on her own feet, blinking at the Doctor as if she just realized that he was an alien. "You can do that?"

"That and so much more," the Doctor winked saucily at her, making Donna roll her eyes. Honestly, she wasn't really in the mood to be bantering with him right now. She felt horrible, and she felt like someone had violently taken something away from her. In her irrational mind, she blamed it on the Doctor. What was wrong with her?  

"We can't go back anymore, can we?" Donna asked, looking towards the closed doors of the TARDIS. They were moving, she knew, as far away from 1969 Chiswick as possible. The farther they went, the more it hurt Donna. 

"No," the Doctor confessed, all the pride and bravado drained out of him suddenly. "It's time-locked. Over time the Angels will take over the house to look for us, and life will go on."

_This is all your fault,_ Donna almost said, biting her tongue (miracle!) and walking towards the kitchen. 

"I'll make tea," she said instead. She had to do something to get away from him, she needed time to process this. She felt like she'd lost her father all over again, and now she was grieving a Gran she was never supposed to know. 

The Doctor said nothing, watching as Donna, still in his coat and their 60s pyjamas, left the console room. She looked so sad and dejected, he felt guilty for doing this to her. But they were safe, Sally Sparrow was safe, and nobody had died. That was more than what the Doctor could have asked for. 

He was just about to check on the TARDIS, trying to find out when or how he'd managed to install a DVD protocol when the sound of sobbing filled the air. It was the sound of someone trying very hard not to cry, trying and failing.

"Oh, don't do that," the Doctor groaned as he looked up at the TARDIS ceiling, looking pained as he leaned against the console. "Don't...don't do that."

The ship, sentient and connected to him as she was, knew that this was the last thing he wanted to hear. He already knew she was upset. He would try to mess with the console a bit, pull out a few cables, twist a couple of dials, whack a few things, but just the thought of that made the TARDIS turn up the volume on Donna's restrained sobs. 

Sighing deeply, the Doctor pulled on the parking lever, letting the TARDIS drift along the Vortex before walking slowly to the kitchen to where Donna was. She was standing with her back to the door, waiting for the kettle of boil as she wiped away her tears. The Doctor released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.

"I would have been happy to stay."

"What?" Donna asked in surprise, almost knocking down the mug and teapot she'd put aside. The Doctor saw the telltale signs of her crying, red nose, snot and all. He always thought she looked quite beautiful when she cried, but he'd never said it out loud. He knew he would never hear the end of it if he did. 

"This isn't the first time I thought I would have to stay," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, uncomfortable with the thought of thinking of Renee again. He never told Donna or Martha about that, not even Rose knew that he had already elected to stay in France. "Taking the slow path. I would have loved taking it with you."

She looked at him, searching his eyes for a hint of a lie, a sense that he was simply pandering her insecurity. But in those old eyes, hurt and hope dancing across them, she found none. He meant all of that, honestly and truly. 

"But I promised you the stars," he said softly, daring to take a few steps closer to her. He took Donna's hands and kissed the top of her knuckles, rubbing over the spot with the pad of his thumb. Donna's eyes were downcast, her breath hitching as she quelled her sobs. "I promised to show you the universe, every inch of it, the good and the bad, and you deserve nothing less than that."

She continued to look down at the floor, her silence was so unlike her that the Doctor was sure he would go bonkers waiting for her to speak. She had accused him of talking without really saying anything, and now that he'd actually said _something_ , Donna had been struck silent. 

He didn't know what to make of that. So he kept talking.

"I can be without the TARDIS, maybe, without all of this, as long as you're with me. And no, I've never said that to anyone else, because there was never...not really anyone else," he sighed, pulling her hands closer to himself so her body was just flush against his. He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry I had to put you through all of this, and that I didn't get us out faster. I thought we needed this, something easy and uncomplicated, but I guess I was wrong."

But still her remained quiet, her eyes glued to their intertwined fingers. 

"Say something Donna," he said with a chuckle, trying to keep the mood light. "Not like you to be so quiet, eh?" 

Another beat. The silence was going to kill him, he was sure. 

"Do you...I'll take you home," the Doctor said, every inch of his body telling him not to say that. But isn't that what she wanted? To be with her family, to have a chance at having a home of her own, someone who loved her? Someone who didn't put her in danger and ask that she put her life in his hands on a daily basis?

She looked up at him then, her eyes glassy and shocked. Is that what _he_ wanted, for her to go back to being absolutely worthless? To settle for a less than ordinary life, after he just said she deserved to see it all? Her brows furrowed and she let go of his hands.

"Oi Martian," she said, swatting his arm. "Who said I wanted to go home? You're certainly not the boss of me!"  

"But..I--"

Donna walked back to the stove, attending to the whistling kettle as he looked at her in surprise. She handed him a warm cup of tea with four sugars and little milk, just the way he liked it. 

"Listen here, Time Lord," she said, coming back up to him and poking his skinny chest with a finger. "I told you I was staying forever, and nothing you can do will ever stop me from tying myself to the console just to travel with you. Got that?"

The Doctor found his mouth split into a wide grin, a grin so bright that he could stand next to a supernova and still come out giddier. 

"Oh Donna Noble," he sighed, placing a hand on her lower back and pulling her closer, sloshing her tea a bit. "I love you."

"Steady on, Spaceman," she smiled, raising her head up to plant a soft, warm kiss on his lips. The Doctor put aside his teacup and grabbed Donna's, setting it aside as well just in time for her to throw her arms around his neck before he sent them spinning across the kitchen. Neither of them notice the TARDIS lights flicker before shining brightly, putting Donna's room right across the kitchen to avoid accidents. Sure there were still a few loose ends to be tied, but for now, they had all the time in the world to be together.

And the Angels remained in Wester Drumlins, where they were doomed forevermore. 

* * *

_Epilogue_

There wasn't a lot for Sylvia Noble to do these days. Wilf's army pension and her husband's life insurance were more than enough to cover her living expenses. If she needed extra, she always knew how to find work. She was an accountant by profession, after all. If there was anything anyone always needed it was an accountant.

With Donna flouncing off to lord knows where with that silly man (despite Wilf's assurance that she was quite nappy and well cared for), Sylvia usually found herself spending the days cleaning up the attic. Their house was old, and had accumulated quite a lot of sentimental junk over the years. 

So when Wilf was off with his mates or seeing that woman with amnesia, Sylvia was in the attic. She'd already found her old wedding gown, her father's old records, her mother's favorite hat. She found some of Donna's old baby things, trying to settle herself with the idea that they weren't going to be used anymore.  

She came across Geoff's stiff old leather jacket, and she couldn't help the tears that sprung into her eyes. She could still see him wearing it in her mind's eye. She remembered holding on to him for dear life as hey sped through London in his new motorcycle. She remembered pulling the lapels when they snogged, just because she could. She remembered sneaking into that house...what was it called?

Sylvia pulled the jacket out, intending to hang it in her closet, just to keep a part of her husband close to her. She didn't notice in the pile of sentimental junk was a record of Bohemian Rhapsody, signed simply;

'To the Motts and the Nobles, with love from the Doctor and Donna, 1969."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you had as much fun as I did. :P


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